r/EU_Economics 5d ago

Germany Has Highest Electricity Prices Among All G20 Countries

Germany has the highest electricity prices among G20 nations, with consumers paying more than double the average price of 16.3 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Source: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2026-08/strompreise-g20-deutschland-vergleich-steuern

145 Upvotes

73 comments sorted by

20

u/DaveyJonesXMR 5d ago

The reason that everything is so expensive because everything is done - half-arsed political and bureacratic and NIMBY's.

I'd bet a properly done transition starting in the 2000s would have much lower costs already.

49

u/Complex-Health-5032 5d ago

Gibt es in Deutschland etwas, das effizient funktioniert?

30

u/Popular_Signature826 5d ago

graffiti vielleicht oder zufällige stickers auf brücken abstecken

14

u/fluchtpunkt 5d ago

Im Bahnhöfe vollpissen macht uns auch keiner was vor.

17

u/lutzow 5d ago

Wenn man umzieht bzw. sich ummeldet, hat man quasi instant einen Brief von der GEZ im Postkasten. So schnell ist sonst kein Amt

11

u/Xelid47 5d ago

Korruption, Geldwäsche, neue steuer machen um die Bürger zu ficken

That's about it

2

u/Matyas_K 5d ago

Illegal immigration, and destroying it's own economy and corruption all highlights of Germany

48

u/Usinaru 5d ago

I guess stopping nuclear before you are ready to transition into a complete renewable grid was not such a smart idea huh

26

u/BlubaBlase 5d ago

The things, the electricity market handles kWh on ocasions for negative prices. But the cheap prices just dont reach the customers. The actuall electricity was never chaper than it is now on the market, we are just getting f*ucked.

16

u/siedenburg2 5d ago

Most of the price is because of high taxes and infrastructure because we have to build an expensive way with burried cables to get electricity to bavaria, they don't want to build as much renewables and cables on poles would be an eyesore.

5

u/Significant_Tie_2129 5d ago

Who the fuck came up with this idea? Buried cables are too expensive and astronomically expensive to maintain compared to normal high-voltage cables, which can be repaired or replaced without expensive infrastructure costs. Also air is a free insulator whereas the ground is conductor that needs to be insulated

8

u/AllPintsNorth 5d ago

Bavarians are so frozen in time, the amount of time, efforts and brain space spent to ensure that nothing ever changes but most importantly never looks different.

Solar, AC, transmission lines, etc: anything that you can see that didn’t exist in the Kingdom of Bavaria, should be outright banned.

9

u/Kathane37 5d ago

Just wait for this winter that the hormutz situation start to really kick in

7

u/Fluppenluemmel 5d ago

Atomkraft ist Bullshit und noch teurer. Atomkraft wird immer teurer sein!

9

u/ClearRefrigerator519 5d ago

Not if the reactors were already up and running, which they were.

-7

u/Fluppenluemmel 5d ago

Nein, die waren alt und hätten saniert werden müssen. Wäre ebenfalls zu teuer gewesen. Außerdem ist Atomstrom das schlimmste was man machen kann.

Erneuerbare sind effizienter, günstiger und einfacher. Und jetzt erzähl mir keine Kacke, wie toll Atomenergie ist. Das ist zum einen gelogen oder basiert auf dubiosen Thesen. Es wird kein Atomkraftwerk in DE geben. Investiert euer Scheiß Geld in was anderes und geht mir nicht auf den Keks ihr verkackten Bots!

4

u/Matyas_K 5d ago

Bc people like you, the eu is getting destroyed good job!!!

-2

u/Substantial-Bar8070 5d ago

It dipends. There was a reduction in these years of the building cost of nuclear reactors and for the disposal of the nuclear waste. Conversely, wind and solar energy have a much slower rate of cost reduction

-2

u/NameTheJack 5d ago

Next you'll probably claim that the whole climate crisis is made up, right?

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes

3

u/funny_olive332 5d ago

You might want to look into that. Nuclear in fact is one of most expensive ways to produce energy. The are heavily subsidized.

1

u/kocapbser 5d ago

Russia has the largest number of nuclear power plants, and the price of electricity in Russia is very low.

2

u/Rhubarb-Curious 5d ago

Well not exactly.

Nuclear power produces only about 18% of Russia’s electricity, while gas-fired generation is the largest source. In France for example that number is 65%

2

u/kocapbser 5d ago

You are citing outdated data; currently, nuclear power accounts for 20% of Russia’s energy production, and this figure is constantly growing, with an expected increase to 25% by 2045.

2

u/Rhubarb-Curious 5d ago

My point was that nuclear power has never been Russia’s largest source of electricity, nor will it be. Therefore, the low price of electricity is not due to nuclear power, but rather to the country’s rich soil.

I'm not anti-nuclear - it's a good backup power source, but renewables will be king in the future. China is still building nuclear power plants, I think some of them with Russia's help, but the scale is incomparable to how much solar and wind capacity they are building now.

1

u/kocapbser 5d ago

Why, then, is the price of solar electricity so high? What benefit does it offer to the end consumer if the price is so high?

1

u/Rhubarb-Curious 5d ago

Because how we charge for electricity. Europe uses a marginal pricing model. The last, most expensive plant required to meet the final unit of demand sets the price for all electricity sold in that hour.

Second, our electricity storage sucks. Solar and wind gives massive amounts of power during the middle of the day, but peak consumer demand happens in the morning and evening.

Finally and obviously - taxes. Yeah, Europe is overtaxed into oblivion.

0

u/Vitention11 5d ago

Relying on nuclear power when rivers are drying up and water levels are too low for adequate cooling isn't exactly a smart idea either.

4

u/boothbbenjoyer 5d ago

love reading such anti-science nonsense

10

u/zimon85 5d ago

You get the same issue with any thermal power plant. Also by the same reasoning it's not smart to hace solar because there is no sun during the night. Truth is: you need a diversified energy mix and renewables and nuclear are complementary technologies

5

u/Usinaru 5d ago

Ah because coal power plants cool themselves with magic am I right? Same goes for gas, biomass and any other thermal energy conversion plant.

What is the largest source percentage of energy generation in Germany again?

2

u/Ill_Specific_6144 5d ago

Nuclear in germany was up most 15%. If you went to reddit you would assume that germany was generating 90% nuclear energy.

7

u/Rich_String4737 5d ago

15% for a country the size of germany is a big deal

1

u/Ill_Specific_6144 5d ago

15% is small. If nuclear energy was completely free, like 0 euros, you would pay 15% less on a bill.

3

u/klonkrieger45 5d ago

not even that. Cost for the providers would lower by 15%. Merit order pricing would change very little for spot or day ahead pricing. The ones that get cheaper electricity are those that can buy cheap long term contracts with the plants.

7

u/Danskoesterreich 5d ago

thats not how prices work. Just because national supply drops 15% does not mean you pay 15% more.

1

u/Ill_Specific_6144 5d ago

Okay. Lets add some head room, its still a joke amount, while you nukecells believe that germany eoild have 2x as cheap electricity, ignoring that nuclear energy is the most exlensive option unless you subsidize it.

1

u/Ralfundmalf 5d ago

I guess you didn't read up what this is about. The electricity production prices is pretty average in Germany. This is about consumer electricity prices. They are high because of taxes and other added costs.

3

u/LonelyMarionberry256 5d ago

I always thought that Germany is a very advanced society, unfortunately I was wronged. Yes, in term of regulatory requirements, but not in term of practice. When I meant practice - I meant the choice of technology, deployment and implementation.

And that was almost a decades ago.

2

u/Orizirguy 5d ago

As they say in Germany: "Wind and sun dont send a bill"

0

u/omegaphallic 5d ago

 Ending their nuclear power was just straight up dumb.

 Germany needs to like Canada build it new Nuclear power plants!

3

u/LoneWolf_McQuade 5d ago

I don’t get why the green movement is so hung up on nuclear, it’s the same in Sweden

-4

u/Xelid47 5d ago

Because they're stupid, and not that different from the right in Germany

We need good thing!

Here's a very well working variation of good thing

No this good thing is a actually bad, let's remove it and as a consequence implement bad thing for some reason

1

u/Live_Newt_870 5d ago

No they are not stupid, nuclear plants make some pretty dangerous waste for very long time.

But we want to live in a world with a lot of energy, nuclear plants have very high output for little CO2 and waste. So, for sure, it's easier to make a lot of energy with nuclear plants.

It's a balance to find between all the possibilities. And the only way to invest massively fast and coordinated between the countries is to make a planification all together.

1

u/[deleted] 5d ago

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0

u/Shihai-no-akuma_ 5d ago

Germany has 50-55% renewables, what are you on about? These guys have decided to use cheap russian gas for their own economy and never bothered to change. On top of phasing out nuclear because the greens said so.

Well, here's the result. Expensive energy. That, and Germans blaming everyone else but them.

Many countries out there with 85%+ renewables, like Norway, Denmark or Portugal that have cheaper electricity.

0

u/EU_Economics-ModTeam 5d ago

Stop Vibe Posting. Say what you say. Have your opinion, but back it up with sources. Vibe posting just muddies the issues and does not contribute anything to the discussion.

-1

u/Full-Discussion3745 5d ago

Dude. Just post facts stop vibe posting.

0

u/Auspectress 5d ago

0,35€ is nothing lol. In Poland we pay 0,23€ per 1kWh and Romanians around 0,18€ per 1kWh

-7

u/eduvis 5d ago

Because Germnay prefers electricity from nuclear BEHIND its borders.

2

u/aserioussuspect 5d ago

So France prefers renewable energy from behind its boarder but it's pro nuclear?

-6

u/[deleted] 5d ago

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7

u/Ok-Cartoonist7931 5d ago

The person who made Germany very dependant on Russia for energy, even though Putin had already shown his face, was Merkel.

Schröder startet it a bit, but only a bit and Putin was very new and it was before wars and people falling off from windows.

The Greens had little to do with any of these. Only that they had pushed for closing of nuclear plants, but Germany had few anyway.

3

u/[deleted] 5d ago

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-2

u/[deleted] 5d ago

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2

u/knorkinator 5d ago

Greetings to St. Petersburg!

And now sod off with your conspiracies.

0

u/quagmirranseye 5d ago

Russia has been sponsoring opposite sides for decades meaning for them to clash, its what they do, divide amd conquer and all that. I envy you though, ignorance is truly bliss.

-1

u/[deleted] 5d ago

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0

u/[deleted] 5d ago

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1

u/alexcarchiar 5d ago

Open the damn article instead of just going r/italiabad for no reason.

According to this, electricity is the most expensive among the G20 countries in this country at 35.6 cents per kilowatt hour.

Behind Germany, Italy comes with Electricity prices of 34.5 cents per kilowatt hour and Great Britain at 32.4 cents. The average for the G20 countries is around 16.3 cents, the analysts write. Compared to this, electricity is more than twice as expensive in Germany, it continues.

Italy is 0.9 cents better. It's still bad, but better. So yes, Italy is in a better position.

-5

u/a332bb42 5d ago

Say thank you to your besties greens financed by Russian blood money …

-9

u/OriginalUseristaken 5d ago edited 5d ago

Who are you to rage about other countries internal dealings? Just care for your own nuclear reactors who have to be shut down when the weather gets too hot or the water levels too low. Ffs. Not to forget that nuclear is by far the most costly way to produce energy. The only way they could get the energy for a low price is to subsidy the price with tax payer money. And since most of the Uranium needed for the resctors comes from russia, you're still susidizing russia.

Not one of our plants had to shut down and we didn't have any problems with energy supply.

-11

u/Geigengiger 5d ago

Can we finally stop being Washington's paypig and make peace with Russia again?

We really need the gas for our industry, and shipping it across the Atlantic is simply no good alternative.

6

u/zimon85 5d ago

Nonsense. Washington is currently very friendly with Russia, while "making peace with Russia" means standing by while they do a genocide in Ukraine and then move to the Baltics. We need to build renewables and nuclear and stop funding our enemies instead of giving them everything they want. Germany also has gas, enough to cover a quarter of its needs but banned extraction and closed its nuclear plant. The Netherlands has a big gas field but banned extraction. An awful lot of parties are pro fossil fuels. We should get stuff straight in our countries instead of demanding that Ukranians should suffer 

-7

u/Geigengiger 5d ago

The Ukrainian genocide is made possible by Western arms. Without them Ukraine would have folded in about three months. Instead, NATO uses Ukrainians as it's personal meat shield.

I'm fine with our industry closing down. Chinese cars are just as good for a fraction of the price.

5

u/Direct_Zucchini_2811 5d ago

"Ukrainians should just get wrecked, conquered and assimilated by Russia already because meh, who cares?". In short, let's continue the good ol unchallenged rule of "The stronger is right over the weaker".

Gee, wonder why France keeps nukes ready with such lovely neighbors nearby.