While it hurst individuals, many people don't see it as an undue burden because they can pay the bills. But there are whole classes of industries that are very energy dependent, and cannot move into an area with high energy prices. The jobs go elsewhere. Even industries like data centers are extremely rate dependent.
Generally, utilities give businesses, particularly large ones, better rates than homeowners. Germany, at this point probably being more industrial than the US, couldn’t survive at the rates shown. I wonder what the disparity is between business rates and homeowner rates there as opposed to here.
“Even industries like data centers are extremely rate dependent.”
You didn’t get the point. Electricity for comercial use is cheap in Germany. Consumer prices for energy are going thru the roof only. It’s quite complicated, but i’ll try to explain:
The large investments for green energy have to get paid by someone. So the state subsidizes these investments. Therefore large investments cause large subsidies. The problem in the case of germany are the subsidies. But in the end it’s a no brainer to understand why this model won’t work.
1) The whole european network is intermeshed and all countries in europe have free trade.
2) German grid operators have to prefer green energy by law in their networks and have to buy it at a high fixed rate. To make investments in green energy attractive. The grid operators get the difference in between the energy stock price and the fixed rate refunded by a government operated fond/pool. Due the volatile character of green energy, this forces conventional energy producers to lower their production on demand.
2) Operators of conventional power plants are forced by law to keep their capacities for network stability. That means that huge power plants are forced into a standby role. To reduce the costs of spare capacities, conventional power plants flood the EU market outside Germany on the energy spot market with their capacities when not needed. This largely reduces the stock price on energy in entire europe.
3) The government pool/fond is filled by a tax on energy called “Energieumlage”. Commercial energy consumers are largely exempted from this tax. So only “private” consumers have to pay this tax.
The more green energy is produced in germany, the lower the price on energy stockmarket in europe gets. This lower stock price raises the gap between the fixed rate for green producers and causes a higher energy tax.
The results:
Higher energy prices for german “private” consumers. Lower energy prices for business and all over Europe ! The german taxpayer now subsidizes also his french neighbors electricity bill.
The battle between the seen and the unseen continues unabated. We’re always shown just half the accounting.