How the Electricity Feed-In Law (Stromeinspeisungsgesetz) Came to Be Passed by the German Parliament, Enabling Renewable Energies to Establish Their Position in the Market - Wind Power for the World: The Rise of Modern Wind Energy - page 485

might one day be shattered and they could find themselves
completely worn out and exposed to the ridicule of the established
fossil and atomic energy sector. During their term of office,
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's red-green coalition government
strengthened the dictatorship of the electricity supply industry
significantly, under the guise of the so-called “liberalisation” created
by Chancellor Kohl. And all this took place under the protection
of Schröder's accomplice, Economic Afairs Minister Werner
Müller (independent in political terms perhaps, but certainly not
with regard to corporate interests). The energy supply sector in
2011 is demanding subsidy guarantees for its coal-fired power
stations and monopoly guarantees for its new generation of
large power plants and high-voltage transmission lines.

21.2 The Ongoing Destruction of Our Public

Services and the Very Basis of Our
Existence

Shortly before the legislative period 1998-2002 came to an
end—and while all the protestors were on holiday—the German
government shamelessly ruined their political record with regard
to energy policy. Chancellor Schröder and his Economic Afairs
Minister Werner Müller (a former E.ON employee and eligible for a
company pension) flouted the decision reached by the Monopolies
Commission and the Federal Cartel Office and gave the go-ahead
for the takeover of the Ruhrgas AG Company by E.ON. The explicit
aim of the merger was to limit competition in the German gas
market. E.ON was to rise up to become a global player, financing
its international conquests by means of guaranteed revenues, in
other words by charging “unjustified and excessively increased”
prices to its customers in Germany. At the same time, the concept
of the multi-utility company as the ideal provider of services was
being praised to the skies—“from the power station to the wall
socket, from the borehole to the gas cooker and from the source
to the water tap”. Already in 2002, gas prices in Germany were
far higher than those of other EU nations.
Aristotle, who perceived that form is a more decisive factor
than substance, would also have recognised that concentrating