The reality of Merkel's failed energy transition is beginning to dawn on German consumers and industry

Merkel will not be re-elected unless she begins to reverse her failed energy  transition  policy.

The reality of Angela Merkel's failed energy transition policy is beginning to dawn on German consumers and small and medium-sized companies:

Major industry is being spared of the costs relating to Germany's expensive shift from nuclear to green energies. The burden is being placed on small and medium-sized business as well as German consumers, who pay the second highest price for electricity in Europe. Resentment is starting to grow.
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Small- to medium-sized companies such as these are finding themselves in surprising solidarity with private energy consumers, who now pay more than 25 euro cents ($0.32) per kilowatt hour of electricity, with that price steadily on the rise. Industry pays 12.4 cents per kilowatt hour, according to Eurostat. Within the 27-member bloc, only Danish households pay more than Germans, with electricity costing an average of 29.8 cents for kilowatt hour compared to the EU-wide average of 18.4 cents. By comparison, the average price per kilowatt hour of electriticity in the United States in 2011 was 11.8 US cents (9.12 euro cents) for residential customers, $0.102 for commercial enterprises and $0.0688 for industry, according to statistics provided by the US Energy Information Administration.

A Two-Class Society

Germany is increasingly splitting into two different countries when it comes to energy: the land of those who have to fork up the cash to fund the transition to renewable energy sources, and the land of those who have remained unscathed, at the expense of others.

This imbalance then ends up doubled and tripled, because the savings made by major industrial players show up instead on the bills of private energy consumers. Then there's the fact that big consumers such as steel mills draw their electricity from the spot market at the European Energy Exchange (EEX) in Leipzig, where major consumers from the industrial sector pay just six cents per kilowatt hour.

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Fully half of all energy consumption in Germany is now accorded special status or allowed to waive fees, he says, and the ones who lose out the most are small and mid-sized companies, whose energy bills increase all the more as a result. "This sends a devastating message," Leprich concludes.

The main reason for the increase in energy costs is the simple fact that generating electricity with wind parks and solar arrays is more expensive.

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Germans are hard working people, who do not easily complain, but with the economy slowing down, energy prices skyrocketing, and with no end in sight for the paymaster role in the euro crisis, no wonder that resentment is growing. If Merkel wants to get re-elected, she must soon begin to reverse her failed energy transition and euro rescue policies. The longer she delays, the more difficult the task becomes.