Project

National governments grant exceptions from taxes and surcharges on electricity prices for energy intensive industries. Many of these privileges are justified by competitiveness reasons. Without exceptions, companies are expected to shift their production to other countries with lower electricity prices. Ecofys and Fraunhofer ISI are examining the privileges for selected industrial sectors and compare their total electricity prices. In a short summary, results are shown for two different cases: An energy-intensive big company and a medium-sized company. Prices and their components are shown for Germany, the Netherlands, UK and France. Also, estimations are given for Pennsylvania and Texas. In Europe, French prices are lowest for big and medium-sized industrial customers. The highest prices are to be expected in the UK. European prices in total are significantly higher than electricity prices in the US-American market areas.