Households in Hamburg are paying less this year to use the electricity grid: the so-called grid fees for electricity are around 17 percent lower than in 2025, according to Hamburger Energienetze GmbH — partly thanks to a federal subsidy. For an average household customer, that means a saving of about 8.40 euros a month.
The municipal company benefited in its most recent financial year from rising demand for energy and grid connections, including from operators of battery storage and data centres as well as from industry. Revenue rose by around 12.8 percent to almost 1.5 billion euros; the company paid 130.4 million euros to the city.
Five years faster to climate neutrality
At the same time, the grid operator is accelerating the transformation of the energy supply. After Hamburg's residents voted in a referendum in October 2025 to bring CO2 neutrality forward from 2045 to 2040, the company is now advancing its planning by five years. Last year alone it increased its investments by around a third, to 580 million euros.
A central project is the construction of a hydrogen industrial network, part of which is due to go into operation next year. Because capacity for new grid connections is limited, the company is also introducing a new procedure that will regulate the order of connections more strategically than the previous "first come, first served" approach, in which only the timing of the application counted.