A recent report from Eurostat about fuel prices in Europe – showed that the cost of Electricity for Irish households was the 11th highest in the EU. This might be different to what has been reported in some newspapers.
This 11th position is based on the average charges including all taxes adjusted for “purchasing power“. ( If the prices are compared using Euros – Ireland comes out as the 3rd most expensive.)
Purchasing power is usually seen as a better comparative measure than just comparing the price in Euros – because it takes into account other factors in each country – such as earnings and costs of other services and products.
For example – it would not be fair to compare the price in Euros of Electricity in two countries where the minimum wage in one country was double that of the other.
Portugal came out as the most expensive for electricity at 0.2932 perKwH (Using Purchasing Power) or 0.2285 Euro .
The EU average was 0.2105/Kwh (Using Purchasing Power) and Ireland was 0.2202. (0.2454 Euro)
The average price in purchasing power for the 11 countries that use the Euro was 0.2164 , Ireland at 0.2202 was only slightly above that average (only 2%)
Germany , Romania , Spain , Poland , Turkey, Latvia , Italy, Slovakia and Denmark all came out as more expensive than Ireland.
The country with the cheapest Electricity in terms of purchasing power was Iceland at 0.0980 – less than half of the cost in Ireland. The rest of the top 5 cheapest countries were all ones with cold climates – Norway, Finland, Serbia and Sweden.
We can’t choose to buy our electricity from Iceland – but you might be able to get a better price by looking at our page about switching supplier to get cheaper electricity prices in Ireland