Klaus Meier lists three reasons for generating his own electricity in his family hotel in Germany’s southern city of Freiburg — “cost savings, energy efficiency, climate protection”. Like a growing number of German small businesses, home-owners, schools, hospitals and industrial plants, Meier has opted for energy self-sufficiency.
Of the about 600 terawatt hours Germany consumes each year, 50 TWh are self-produced — about 8% of the total — in a trend that has seen solar panels installed on home roofs and gas plants set up in factories. In industry, the share is around 20% according to business and energy consumers groups. Their main goal: cost savings. Homemade power in Germany, which has among Europe’s highest electricity bills, is not taxed unlike conventional electricity where one third of the customer’s bill goes into the public coffers. And neither are the do-it-yourselfers subject to the duties used to subsidize the country’s wider “energy transition” away from fossil fuels and nuclear power and towards clean energy.
“If the power we produce ourselves in Ludwigshafen was taxed, it would cost half a million euros,” said Kurt Bock, head of chemical giant BASF, which runs three gas power plants on its site in southwestern Germany.
