German electricity is expensive because gas is expensive in Germany. Electricity will be expensive in Germany until Germany completely stops using gas shipped in via container ship.
Cherry on top some powerful player blew up Nordstream forcing Germany to buy exorbitantly expensive LNG.
Your argument to stop using LNG doesn’t work if you have many parts of industry build with gas infrastructure which can’t be replaced just like that.
German wholesale electricity prices are relatively low by European standards - so far this year about 8th cheapest - about 13% cheaper than of France, for example[1]. This reflects the blended cost of production. Household prices are higher than average - because domestic consumption of electricity is taxed more heavily in Germany than the average in Europe.
[0] https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/electrical-energy [1] https://ember-climate.org/data-catalogue/european-wholesale-...
The issue is that Germany exports "waste" electricity. It almost always exports cheap power, and imports at high rates. In negative price events, you will almost always see Germany in the exporter list.
For instance, today, France imported from Germany between 10:30 and 15:45, when market prices reached bottom, and exported to Germany when prices soared, including between 18h and 21h [1].
Another issue is that Germany's inability to control its power production is big enough that it can't be compensated by cross-border trades. That's what can be seen today between 18h and 21h [2], where the price spread between France and Germany became very large.
This kind of pattern has been happening all week.
[1]: https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici... [2]: https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/market-data
Note that these are the prices generators receive for selling electricity on the spot market. They are not the same as the prices paid by electricity consumers, which can also include taxes, levies, network charges, subsidies, and supplier profits. They also do not account for hedging.
> Household prices are higher than average - because domestic consumption of electricity is taxed more heavily in Germany than the average in Europe.
https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/Artikel/Energy/electircity-... shows 19% VAT, which is definitely a choice by the government. However even before taxes and levies Eurostat showed the price in Germany is about 0.28 EUR/MWh versus 0.22 EUR/MWh in France.
One reason Germany has been able to shift so much electricity to France is the EU Renewable Energy Directive (which excludes nuclear power but includes biomass and biofuels). Intermittent power from Germany counts against any power generated by France's nuclear power stations, helping to meet percentage consumption targets.
https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/renewabl...
Germany is exporting because it produces useless renewable power. It is useless because it does not satisfy the demand. The demand is on dark, cold days, it is for processes that are useless if they are interrupted.
Have you honestly tried buying steel for a project? I have, the vast majority of European suppliers are now borderline useless. Delivering early is as bad as delivering late, bad enough that if the product was free I'd think twice, and they do both.
And no, storage of energy is not cost-competitive. Not even with nuclear. Not even within two orders of magnitude at the scale required, which is not kWh, not MWh, not even GWh, but tens of TWh. The best I've seen gives you time to cold start a gas plant, and that's it. That is what the battery sector gives as achievement. It's not enough and it's not close.
Part of that is, that EU-wide there are increasing costs to producing CO2. Which makes power from coal and gas more expensive. This caused a strong drop in coal energy in germany in 23, as there were cheaper alternatives. This trend is expected to continue.
Gas costs saw a spike due to the war Russia started and their attempt at blackmailing Germany and consequently cutting gas delivery to Germany. Gas usage has been reduced and gas prices are roughly back to pre-war levels. But indeed, the LNG part of it is more expensive than the russian gas. On the other side, switching heating to heat pumps will reduce the overal gas consumption drastically.
Gas never bore a main load of the grid, it is mostly for supporting short time demands. This role will be important with renewables, but the overall amount of gas energy will drop
At the same time, buildup of renewables has been greatly sped up by the current government, the electricity is already generated buy almost 60% renewables.
Germany was forced already before that, since Russia used the Gas to blackmail Germany
They can't, so it isn't.