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(Translated from German, from this article)
Eight years ago, 83 per cent of the people voted in a referendum in favour of returning the electricity grid to municipal ownership - the success was only narrowly defeated by a low voter turnout. The senate's decision this week to buy back the electricity grid from the Swedish company Vattenfall and thus to remunicipalise it can be understood as the implementation of the majority will of the interested city public.
The decision is undoubtedly the right one, because a city's infrastructure - in this case lines, transformer stations, grid nodes and stations - has no place in the hands of private corporations and their pursuit of profit. Even fewer people saw it that way in the mid-1990s: At that time, Berlin sold its majority stake in the municipal electricity supplier Bewag to an industrial consortium which, after several resales, was absorbed into the Vattenfall Group. So a mistake of the past is being repaired.
It also puts an end to the years-long dispute over the award of the necessary concession, which is a condition for operating the electricity grid. Vattenfall's concession expired in 2014. The company had fought against the award procedure in court and thus thwarted its competitor, the Landesbetrieb Berlin Energie. Now the latter will get its chance. Vattenfall will receive 2.14 billion euros.
The sum is not to burden the state budget, but is to be financed through loans, which will then be repaid from the profits of the grid operation - about 100 million euros per year. Incidentally, the petition for a referendum on expropriating Deutsche Wohnen & Co also wants to use the same model to pay the compensation for the housing companies. The fact that the Senate has shown that this is possible in the case of the electricity grid should give the initiative a boost.
One controversial question remains: Will the Bürger Energie Berlin cooperative also be involved in the operation of the electricity grid in the future? The red-red-green coalition agreement had committed to cooperative participation. And the goal is still right: it is no longer just about the duality of state or market; a democratic society today must involve citizens and thus also customers in public companies.
