Interview with Gundolf Schweppe (Uniper Energy Sales)

The advantage or disadvantage of dealing with energy issues is that you get a more in-depth insight into political processes. Unfortunately, this does not always strengthen trust in these procedures. In October and November, the German government launched several legal initiatives to transpose the Climate Protection Programme into law. This should be welcomed, as it pushes forward climate and energy policies. On the other hand, the enormous time pressure does not lead to a coherent easy-to-handle set of rules. But this switching between inertia and hectic is characteristic for the energy and climate policies of the current German government. The problem for the gas industry is that green gases are not really appropriately considered in the latest laws. This is surprising, taking into account the Gas Dialogue 2030 and the upcoming hydrogen strategy.

A final word on green gases: At the end of the month, I had the pleasure of attending the Baltic Gas Conference in Tallinn. The Baltics and the Nordics are tiny gas markets. I was surprised to learn how intensively Finland is thinking about green gas/hydrogen. The new independent TSO will not start work before January 1, 2020, but is already these topics discussing with the Finnish government – and the government is interested. This is a topic that Uniper and Fortum can discuss in more detail…

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TOPIC OF THE MONTH Interview with Gundolf Schweppe (Uniper Energy Sales)

In January 2018, ener|gate Gasmarkt last talked to Gundolf Schweppe, the managing director of Uniper Energy Sales. At the time, we talked about a “flat rate” product that Uniper Energy Sales offered utilities for their customers. The idea: The customer pays a fixed monthly lumpsum fee for the gas supply without any extra ex-post charging if the consumption deviates from the calculated level. Uniper tested the product from October 2018 with five utilities and a maximum of 500 customers per utility. The more general idea behind the product initiative was to revitalise partnerships with local utilities and to offer risk and task sharing that allows each partner to use its strengths. For the flat-rate product, this means that Uniper provides its experience with the hedging of temperature risks and the efficient provision of volumes. The utilities add the knowledge of local markets to approach the appropriate customers for such a product and to bear the behaviour risk for these customers.

ener|gate Gasmarkt talked to Mr Schweppe once again. One topic of the latest interview is the experience with the flat rate product. But a more general second topic is further development and new ideas for a sales approach that is based on partnership. One insight from the interview in advance: Uniper is becoming more sustainable!

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Framework conditions

Transposition of the results from the Coal Commission and the Climate Protection Plan 2030

In October and November, the German government launched a whole package of different laws to transpose the results of the Commission on “Growth, Structural Change and Employment” (abbreviated: Coal Commission) (ener|gate Gasmarkt 03/19) as well as the Climate Protection Plan 2030 (ener|gate Gasmarkt 10/19) into national law.

To start with, many of the new rules are not within the competence of ener|gate Gasmarkt and not topics this publication focuses on. But ener|gate Gasmarkt talked with several people about the package; naturally, the press was full of reports. Put bluntly, the whole endeavour can be seen as the next step to fostering mistrust in democracy in general, and energy and climate policies in particular. The different laws are highly complex and mix different topics. Instead of providing a coherent approach to climate policy, vested interests of the various departments of the government and the parties are considered in the drafts. Moreover, there is a deadline of only 48 hours for written stakeholder comments. These procedures will most likely not lead to good laws…

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