The Mannheim-based energy company MVV Energie sees the regulation of the German energy market by the Federal Networks Agency as making an effective contribution to increasing transparency and thus to achieving greater competition. According to the company, the assessment notice now received from the Federal Networks Agency has reduced the level of grid utilisation fees applied for by MVV Energie by 17.8 percent. In an initial statement issued in Mannheim on Wednesday, Dr. Rudolf Schulten, the CEO of MVV Energie, stressed that this decision now provided the company with budgeting reliability for the current year.

The company had already announced in September with a view to the expected assessment notice that it would be leaving its electricity rates unchanged for private customers for the remainder of the current financial year up to the end of September 2007 in spite of the simultaneous increase in procurement prices and that it would thus be passing on the reduction in grid utilisation fees directly to customers. MVV Energie has already issued an analogous price guarantee for gas rates as well.

By introducing consistent cost-saving measures in the past two years, which will have a positive impact in the coming years, the Mannheim energy company had according to its CEO prepared "earlier and more successfully than others" for the future reduction in revenues from its grid division. At the same time, the expansion of its high-growth energy-related services and environmental energy divisions had made the company "more independent of the regulated markets".

Mannheim, 31 January 2007