January 2025 |
260111 |
ENERGY CHRONICLE |
The grid companies of Freiburg-based regional utility Badenova and EnBW subsidiary Naturenergie have settled their long-standing dispute over the concession for the power grid in the city of Weil am Rhein. The solution is that Naturenergie will acquire a stake in the Weil am Rhein electricity grid company, whose right to take over grid operations it had previously contested. Until now, this company has been 51 percent owned by the municipal utilities and 49 percent by Badenova. In future, the city will settle for a 40 percent stake, while the two grid operators will each hold 30 percent.
Furthermore, the grid will initially be leased to Naturenergie for three years from January 1, 2026. The lease will then be transferred to Badenova until the concession expires in 2045. However, Naturenergie will remain a shareholder and contribute to the financing of the grid costs.
The dispute began when the city decided not to renew the concession agreement for the EnBW subsidiary, which expired in 2018, but instead wanted to take over the grid operation itself. In fact, the municipal utilities then announced that, as a municipal enterprise, they had now also taken over “electricity grid operation” as of July 15, 2021, but wanted to operate this business with a “cooperation partner” in the future and had launched a “Europe-wide tendering procedure” for this purpose. This cooperation partner was then – not entirely surprisingly – Badenova, which became a minority shareholder in the newly founded electricity grid company Weil am Rhein GmbH & Co. KG, which was entered in the commercial register three and a half months later.
Meanwhile, the EnBW subsidiary still did not want to relinquish the concession. This did not change even when the city council unanimously decided in July last year to award the concession to the city's new electricity grid company. Instead, it demanded access to the files in order to continue the legal proceedings. This intransigence has now apparently been successful. “By consensus, actual access to the grid can be achieved more quickly and cost-effectively than through years of legal proceedings with an uncertain outcome,” said Mayor Diana Stöcker.
However, the conflict between the EnBW subsidiary and ten municipalities in southern Baden, which have jointly re-tendered their expired concessions and also want to transfer them to Badenova, remains unresolved. Naturenergie continues to refuse to relinquish grid operation, even though it has so far lost the legal dispute (250305). A year ago, more than fifty mayors appealed to Baden-Württemberg's Minister President Kretschmann to use the state's influence as a major shareholder in EnBW to persuade its subsidiary to voluntarily relinquish the electricity grids. However, Kretschmann rejected this on the grounds that he did not want to interfere in EnBW's operational business. Naturenergie defended its stubbornness by pointing out that no final ruling had yet been issued.