The German government will pay the December gas bill for its citizens and small-to-medium sized businesses, under a planned cap published by a state-appointed expert panel on Monday.
Under the commission’s scheme, the one-off December payment would be followed by a gas and heating price cap.
The brake would cut the gas price to 12 euro cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) from March of next year to April 2024 on 80% of usage. The December relief would be worth €5bn and the total plan was costed at €96bn.
Industry would pay 7 cents from January 1 next year until end of April 2024 pay €0.07 per kwh hour for the first 70% of last year’s use.
The panel’s co-chair Dr Veronika Grimm said the subsidised prices would provide a “new normal” that companies and private households could plan with.
“It’s not going to be the case that the price goes back down to 7 cents in the future. We won’t receive Russian gas for a long time,” Grimm said.
The commission of experts, made up of 20 members of industry, unions and academia, was tasked with finding a way to mitigate the impact of soaring energy prices.
Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com
