Conflict in Germany between utilities and Greens on bills.

REW.com: “Germany’s power grid operators boosted the surcharge consumers pay for renewable energy by 18 percent to a record, adding to pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to act against rising electricity bills.” “The four grid companies set the fee paid through power bills at 6.24 euro cents (8.5 cents) a kilowatt-hour next year from 5.28 euro cents now, according to a statement on the website of TransnetBW. The charge has more than quintupled since 2009, helping to make German household power bills the third- highest in the European Union. Big industrial users are largely exempt from the increase.
Merkel is looking for ways to reduce the cost of renewable- energy subsidies after deciding to close the country’s nuclear power plants. The government will reshape the 13-year-old EEG law granting support to technologies such as wind and solar power once Merkel’s Christian Democratic bloc reaches an agreement with another party to form a new coalition following last month’s elections.
….The total subsidy next year will amount to about 23.6 billion euros ($32 billion), which is added to consumers’ power bills. The fee increase will raise the bill of the average German household with 3,500 kilowatt-hours of consumption by about 34 euros a year. Consumers and smaller companies shoulder a bigger portion of the cost of the increase while big industrial users are largely exempt.
….Renewables are wrongly blamed for the increase, said Oliver Krischer, energy policy spokesman for the Greens party, which today is continuing exploratory talks on a possible coalition with Merkel’s conservatives in Berlin.
The fee is rising “because the power market isn’t working and the old government has piled more and more industry aid onto non-privileged electricity consumers,” Krischer said today in an e-mailed statement.
Adding wind turbines and solar panels accounts for only about a 10th of the fee’s increase, he said. Utilities such as EON SE and RWE AG should alleviate the burden on households by passing on falling wholesale power prices, he said.”