The Bundeskartellamt, the German Anti-Trust Authority, has published its fifth Market Power Report, which describes the conditions of competition in the generation of electricity, by analysing the market power situation in the generation and first-time sale of electricity in the period from 1 May 2023 to 30 April 2024.
According to this report, the German energy utility RWE remains the dominant player on the country’s energy market. The power plants of RWE were found to have been indispensable for meeting electricity demand during the reporting period. The degree of RWE’s indispensability (determined by the periods in which it would be possible for RWE to systematically increase market prices) remained at a level exceeding the threshold for the presumption of a dominant position, in contrast with the previous report where LEAG and EnBW were also close to the threshold but have now fallen significantly below it.
According to the Bundeskartellamt, the German electricity market has experienced unusual conditions which curbed the companies’ market power, such as a decline in electricity demand due to lower economic activity, an increase in electricity imports due to the country’s nuclear phase-out, and the reactivation of closed coal-fired plants to curb the electricity price increase in the context of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The report considers that domestic power producers, RWE, LEAG and EnBW will likely become increasingly indispensable as the coal-fired plants have closed again, and electricity demand is expected to continue increasing as the economy recovers. The report also analyses the market conditions in the supply of different types of balancing energy, where it found that pumped-storage hydropower plants are extremely important for positive secondary control power and that the concentration of suppliers is very high, with EnBW being the dominant supplier in the market.
In 2023, RWE was Germany’s largest power generator, with a capacity of more than 15 GW (with a production of 130 TWh), being followed by EnBW with a capacity of 12.2 GW (with a production of 26.5 TWh), and Uniper with a capacity of 9.8 GW (with a production of 16 TWh).
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