Vienna (PK) – The Electricity Price Cost Compensation Act (SAG 2022) was intended to compensate energy-intensive companies in certain sectors for the high electricity price costs in the 2022 calendar year. The support for companies should – based on EU emissions certificate trading – cover up to 75% of the indirect CO2 costs actually incurred in 2022.
The report from Energy Minister Leonore Gewessler on the subsidies under this law is now available (III-1213 dB). Accordingly, the SAG 2022 supported 44 companies with 76 systems from 27 (sub-)sectors. In total, the amount of aid approved and paid out amounted to around €185 million.
According to the report, 37 companies received funding of €500,000 or more. In accordance with the transparency provisions of the guidelines, these were published in the EU’s aid transparency database and on the website of the processing agency aws and are listed in the appendix to the report. The largest funding item of €35 million in this list can be found, for example, at voestalpine Stahl GmbH. According to the report, personal information was published via the national transparency portal if the payment amount exceeded €10,000 per calendar year.
According to the report, the CO2 auction revenues in 2022 as the basis for calculating the funding amounted to around €375 million. Accordingly, the total funding amount of €185 million corresponds to 49.2% of the auction proceeds. Since the period of this support was only limited to 2022 and at the same time as the SAG 2022 was being drawn up and issued, Russia began the war of aggression against Ukraine, it was decided that not only 25% of the auction proceeds from the previous year, but 75% of the auction proceeds would be available is set out in the report with regard to EU requirements. In addition, there was no further funding for the costs in question in Austria for 2022. As far as subsidies under the Corporate Energy Cost Subsidy Act (UEZG) are concerned, the report states that it was guaranteed that the subsidy was excluded from one and the same costs compared to the SAG. (End) mbu
