Close Menu
    Why are Ireland's electricity prices the EU's highest?
    Ireland

    Why are Ireland’s electricity prices the EU’s highest?

    Share.
    View 20 Comments

    20 Comments

    2. South-Tough-1997 on

      Because we keep voting in the same 2 parties since the founding of the state

    3. Veronese1 on

      “In addition, Ireland….is an expensive country to do business in.” You’re telling me! – Michael Healy Rae

    4. MyPhantomAccount on

      I’ll answer in the format of the electricity company’s: why is Irelands electricity so expensive? “Because fuck you, that’s why”

    5. awood20 on

      The obvious answer to reduce the need for gas and fossil fuels. The government should be going all in on generating electricity here. That means renewables, wind, wave and solar. Takes us away from the oil and gas price market and cuts out the price of transporting it here. This is on the government to invest and insulate the market. Prices will then comes down over time.

    6. mother_a_god on

      Every time this comes up, there are people in the thread who defend the system that exists (dearest producer sets the price) and the excessive hedging that is done by providers, citig the one or two times the prices spiked as justification, despite ojn average it costing way more. It seems we have a lot of vested interests in nothing changing. 

      Also, we need to be way more ambitious with our grid expansion plans, incluidng wind and solar. Other countries are doing much more in actual and relative terms. 

    7. Tomaskerry on

      Spain and Australia have reduced electricity prices by having lots of renewables like solar and batteries.

      Might be possible here by 2030 once we have 95% SNSP.

    9. Craicriture on

      End of a long gas pipe, relatively little and expensive subsea DC interconnection, very high infrastructure costs due to low population density scatter patterns in rural areas, and endless NIMBYism blocking renewable infrastructure rollout.

      The configuration as a small, isolated, fragmented market hasn’t been helpful either. We basically didn’t benefit as consumers at all from the market opening – prices went up.
      That generally has not been the case on the continent.

      We’ve also got rapidly growing demand for new connections from housing – despite the talk here, we are building way more housing per 100,000 than almost anywhere else in the EU and that’s competing for generation and network capacity with data centres and is up against endless nimby driven hurdles and blockades, and various nonsense holding up expansion of networks.

      We also aren’t moving fast enough with solar both domestic roof top stuff and large scale e.g we could be using the already strip mined, drained and ruined Bord na Mona bogs and the fact we don’t have offshore wind in a big way at this stage is just utter policy, political and public attitude failure tbh. You can blame the politicians to a degree, but we are the ones driving their priorities and we are scoring a lot of own goals.

    10. qwerty_1965 on

      “He added: “All of the electricity distribution wires in the country would wrap around the world four times,” he said, adding that is “highly unusual in Europe and it means the cost of moving electricity is proportionally much higher here”.

      You in the sticks on God’s little acre, that’s your expense that is.

    11. BadgerBitter5613 on

      Obviously the lack of renewables and the way the price is linked to gas but surely being an island works against us too

    12. Dannyforsure on

      From the article:

      | relation to the cost of moving electricity around, Dr Deane notes that Ireland’s electricity distribution network is “unusually large relative to the size of the population”.

      A great example of the extra cost of one off housing in this country that people like to pretend doesn’t exist.

    13. darrirl on

      Why not – no one in power seems to give a toss . Company’s service the shareholders not the public , if you can charge more for less and get a better return we’ll do that till you get push back .. apathy Ireland we don’t do that ..

    14. Dannyforsure on

      It’s wild for them so ays renewables aren’t cheap when there many people in Ireland have hugely reduced their electric bill with solar and battery combinations.

      If it’s possible for individuals but not at scale that jist reflects commercial needs driving up prices with their demand partners (data centers) and not paying their fair share.

    18. remindmetomorrow on

      We went from having some of the lowest energy costs in Europe to this, after we opened up provision to the private market. And yet no talk of reverting. Shows you where the priorities lie!

    20. AnyIntention7457 on

      Why wouldn’t it be the highest?
      A cup of coffee is regularly €4. Bottle of coke is €2.40
      Bought a Solero ice cream today and it was €3.15
      Houses, cars, holidays all cost a fortune here.

      We’re an extraordinarily expensive place to live.