The Bundestag passed the StromVKG capacity law in final plenary on Thursday 9 July, the CDU/CSU and SPD carrying it against AfD, The Greens and the Left1. StromVKG, Germany's electricity capacity-payment statute, commissions 11 GW of new hydrogen-ready gas capacity, with the first 9 GW tendered in two 4.5 GW tranches on 8 September and 22 December 2026 and a network-charge surcharge of €1-3bn a year from 2031.
Committee stage changed the auction economics. The bid ceiling rose from €173,000/MW to €244,000/MW, a 41% increase that lifts the clearing cost operators can bid into2. A locational split now directs one-third of new capacity to northern Germany and two-thirds to the south, where industrial load concentrates and the retired nuclear fleet once anchored the grid, and barriers for battery-storage bidders were lowered. The arc ran from first reading through the 24 June Anhoerung to committee clearance, where the Greens' hydrogen-conversion motion failed.
The SPD threatened to block this law in April; it passed on 9 July with SPD votes. Raising the ceiling 41% signals that the government expected the September auction to clear thin at the old cap and chose cost certainty over price discipline. Germany is legislating dispatchable backup precisely as its merchant CCGTs whipsaw on the clean spark spread, and the capacity payment funds the firm megawatts that spread will not.
