Politikinstrumente zur Effizienzsteigerung von Elektrogeräten und ...

UBA-TEXTE 20/2006 247economy, taxes, ...) should be available especially to minimize the transaction costssurrounding the investments. However, this could be used to trigger considerable additionalprivate investments.The theoretically best solution appears to be financing over an "efficiency percentage", inother words a general, low surcharge to the price of electricity 7 . To do this, it must bepublicized that the surcharge on the price does finance the fund program to reduce theenergy bill. However, it appears that this will be difficult to implement in a phase of increasingenergy prices as they are at the time this report was completed.A solution according to an EEC model 8 appears to be a mid-term possibility, but requires toomuch clarification to be able to be introduced completely and short term.Inasmuch as voluntary contributions from the economy for a mid to short-term basis (notproject-based) financing of the fund can be won over is very questionable.Co-financing from industry based on an obligation to contribute is imaginable. However, dueto the expected passing off of this to the end customer, this is an indirect form of tax orsurcharge for the end customer. Competitive neutrality and fair treatment are even moredifficult to ensure here than when costs can be directly assigned to the end customer.If the federal budget is used by the state, financing from parts of the eco tax appears to bemore advantageous than taking these funds from the "general" federal budget. However, ifthese means are to be available, for example, to stock up on promotional programs for theKfW to increase energy efficiency, then fund programs especially for electricity efficiency canalso be financed in this manner.From these and other reasons, we recommend the following multi-stage solution forfinancing:Stage 1: At first, the energy efficiency fund should be financed for 3 years for about €330million yearly with a percentage of the eco tax from the federal budget–without raising theeco tax for this reason alone. In this time, the first programs can be started to show theeffectiveness of the fund and to generate public acceptance (regarding the first positive effecton the lowered energy consumption and connected lowered energy costs).Stage 2: To make the funds even more independent in the mid and long-term after this initialtime, the financing after these three years should be with a surcharge on the energy price forthe end customer ("10 % efficiency”) and no longer with the eco tax and the federal budget.Low surcharges are sufficient to reach the suggested yearly budget for the funds. Forexample, private households would only need to pay about 0.15 cents more per kilowatt hourof electricity. In an average household, this corresponds to an average of €5 more per year.This can be more than compensated for by the realizable energy costs savings that can beachieved with efficiency increasing measures.78For competitive reasons, the surcharges must also be applied to other sources of energy.This would let the network operator (or supplier) pay a guaranteed promotion fee for definedefficiency programs and efficiency measures in their area. As with the EEC model, the networkoperators (or suppliers) can recover the money for this by apportioning this on the entire country'selectricity prices.