Compared to the energy visions in the seventies and early eighties, politicians and entrepreneurs today act on a much shorter-term basis. The environment in the power industry does not lend itself to long-term capital investment. Instead of the crunch on the world energy markets expected even fifteen or twenty years ago, there has been an international pressure on prices due to excess supplies in the past few years. Hence the general lack of optimism about the yields attainable irt this sector. Added to the uncertainties of the market are considerable political risks. Germany has no energy programs calculable over a number of parliamentary terms. The big political parties are unable to find firm common ground in the basic issues of energy policy, let alone reduce it to binding agreements. Each election means that policies valid up to that point could soon be toppled. At the same time, energy utilities are now more interested in seeking short-term appreciations of their stock prices. The shareholder value principle very often is interpreted in an extremely short-term way. Moreover, excess supplies and deregulated markers for electricity and gas acid to the national competitive pressure. Costs must be reduced so that adequate returns on investment can be guaranteed. Given the skeptical attitude vis-ri-vis technology in this country, this spells a problem of public acceptance. Any major investment into the power industry must take into account massive objections with concomitant long delays - which makes investors weary of committing themselves to long-term capital investments in Germany. On the other hand, however, German power companies so far have shown relatively little inclination, compared to their international competitors, to commit sizeable amounts of money to the exploration and production of primary energies abroad on a long-term basis. The criticism leveled against German power utilities by German Federal Minister of Economics Gunter Rexrodt that they showed not enough activity abroad should not be shrugged off as a piece of political populism. Dynamic entrepreneurs, alas, are lacking not only in the national power industry but also in politics. For instance, the Federal Government ought to have taken a much stronger interest in seeing to it that, after the positive experience with German representatives at the top of the international Energy Agency in Paris, that organization, would continue to achieve its characteristic profile from national players. At the same time, the European Energy Charter must now be filled with life. There are good chances of success, all the more so as the future German Secretary General of the Secretariat in Brussels is going to inject into the international scene his regulatory experience in the dynamic buildup of energy markets both in the old and in the new German federal states.
