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by k_g_b_ 280 days ago
End consumer prices are utterly unusable to determine success or failure of the Energiewende. They are also utterly useless to compare across nations, as they are made up of very different components - e.g. in Germany only 40% is determined by market factors, in France the price is held artificially low by massive subsidies https://www.lemonde.fr/en/energies/article/2023/04/21/france... and so on.
2 comments

50% of the price in France is also taxes and network maintenance fees so your argument does not make sense.

The retail price is so high because it is a failure of both technology and politics. The taxes are that high because politically they decided to over-invest in a bad technological choice; pretending otherwise is an extremely bad faith argument.

During the second half of 2023, the average price of electricity for residences in France was about 0.273 US dollars per kWh.
I don't understand "in Germany only 40% is determined by market factors". Do you mean that 60% of the price consists of taxes?
All kinds of fees (e.g. for the grid) and taxes, yes. It differs by year and depending on which surcharges were added/removed through laws. E.g. one part was for renewable subsidies and that's been removed in '22.

40% source is here (German, slide 7) https://www.bdew.de/media/documents/BDEW_Strompreisanalyse_0...

Consumer prices are now down to below 0.30 €/kwh again for new contracts (takes a few clicks for anyone) - they were mostly high previously because of Russia's war. This influence on electricity production was removed.