Gas: Federal government prepares pay-as-you-go reserve for crises

The Federal Ministry of Economics is sticking to financing the planned national gas reserve as crisis prevention through a levy. This emerges from a draft bill available to SPIEGEL and the Reuters news agency. The ministry is thus taking up the approach it took in the summer. Economics Minister Katherina Reiche (CDU) had in the meantime also brought funding from the federal budget or a mixed model into play. There was initially no comment from the ministry.

The reserve is intended to replace the legal filling level requirements for gas storage facilities. These were introduced in 2022 after Russian deliveries ceased and will expire on March 31, 2027. A report commissioned by the ministry came to the conclusion that these requirements tend to hinder efficient, purely market-based winter precautions. The first allocation period for the new reserve is scheduled to begin on October 1, 2027.

3.77 to 7.20 euros per year

The draft puts the costs in the first ten years at 247 to 308 million euros annually. For typical households it would be 3.77 to 7.20 euros per year. For a household in a single-family home with 20,000 kilowatt hours of consumption, the draft calculates 5.80 to 7.20 euros, i.e. 0.03 to 0.04 cents per kilowatt hour.

The reserve should consist of 24 terawatt hours and cover the failure of Germany's largest gas import infrastructure for 30 days. It is intended to protect against extreme cases such as sabotage or the failure of important infrastructure.