Rising electricity prices last year mean Ireland once again has the highest household energy costs in the EU.
According to a Eurostat report, the average household in Ireland pays about €480 more per year for electricity than the EU average, reports Breaking News.
At 40.42 cent per kilowatt-hour, including VAT and levies, electricity prices in Ireland are nearly 40% higher than the EU average of 28.96 cent.
Germany has the second-highest electricity prices in the EU at 38.69 cent, followed by Belgium at 34.99 cent, reports Breaking News.
The lowest electricity prices are recorded in Hungary at 10.82 cent, Malta at 12.82 cent, and Bulgaria at 13.55 cent.
The same report indicates that gas prices in Ireland are the eighth highest in the EU, sitting just over eight per cent below the EU average, reports Breaking News.
Commenting on the findings, Daragh Cassidy of Bonkers.ie said: “”The reasons we pay so much more are complex,
“We’ve a relatively small and dispersed population with a lot of one-off housing, so the costs for the upkeep of our electricity network are very high on a per capita basis,
“The rapid growth of the population and the increase in the number of data centres operating here in recent years also hasn’t helped,
“This is putting pressure on the grid. And in recent years, we’ve had to procure high-cost, emergency gas generation to plug the gap between electricity demand and supply,
“We also still rely on gas to generate over 40 per cent of our electricity, the price of which is close to three times what it was before the war in Ukraine. Countries with cheaper electricity generally rely more on hydro and nuclear,
“Many of our power plants are also older and smaller than those in other countries, so we don’t benefit from efficiencies and economies of scale as much,
“And we have a weakly connected grid. We’re quite isolated, so we can’t import a huge amount of cheaper electricity from abroad,
We have only two interconnectors with the UK at present. Although the new interconnector we’re building with France will hopefully improve things when it comes online in 2028, as it will allow us to tap into cheaper French electricity, reports Breaking News.
Tell us your thoughts in the Facebook post and share this with your friends.
