EU: Germany gets approval to acquire stake in grid operator Tennet
Transporting wind energy from Northern Germany to the south: Germany needs new electricity cables and plans to acquire a share in the grip operator Tennet. The EU Commission has now granted its approval for this.
Brüssel (dpa) – The European Commission has approved the Federal Government’s plan to acquire a share in the electricity grid operator Tennet. The applied for project did not give rise to any competition concerns, announced the competent authority for competition matters at the EU level.
According to information published in the past by the Dutch company Tennet Holding, the Federal Government will be taking over 25.1 percent of the company for around 3.3 billion euros with funding from the state promotional bank KfW. Tennet Deutschland is the biggest of Germany’s four transmission grid operators and its extra-high voltage electricity grid between Schleswig-Holstein and Bavaria is about 14,000 kilometres long.
The Dutch Tennet group has been trying for years to sell off its German subsidiary or to find investors that are interested in a stake in it. Maintenance and development of the German high-voltage grid required substantial investments and was not something a Dutch state company should be responsible for, the Dutch government argued.
Thousands of kilometres of new electricity cables must be installed in connection with the energy transition to allow for the wind energy that is generated mostly in Northern Germany to be transported to the main centres of consumption in the south. Enhancing the networks in this way is going to cost several billion euros.
