Energiekonzernen wird „Preistreiberei“ vorgeworfen, da ein internationaler Bericht zeigt, dass sie niedrigere Kosten nicht weitergeben
https://m.independent.ie/business/money/energy-firms-accused-of-price-gouging-as-international-report-shows-they-fail-to-pass-on-lower-costs/a2006838796.html
Von RealDealMrSeal
13 Kommentare
Shocking!
Electricity companies in Ireland are failing to pass on falls in the cost of wholesale energy to consumers and businesses, a new report has found.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) found that retail prices in Ireland are three times higher than wholesale prices – one of the highest gaps in the world.
The agency also found that the gap between what it costs to produce energy in this country and what it is sold for is one of the largest in the world.
The report confirms that Ireland has the highest electricity prices in Europe because we have the largest gap between what it costs to produce energy and what consumers pay.
First-time buyers get €66k on average from First Home Scheme
“The disparity in Ireland was the largest, with the energy component of retail prices three times higher than wholesale prices,” it states.
The IEA is a Paris-based inter-governmental organisation that provides policy recommendations and data on the global energy sector.
It is made up of 32 member countries.
Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan accused electricity companies here of “price gouging”, saying the report “exposes a shocking reality”.
The IEA report says that Irish consumers pay around €0.33/kWh for the energy component of electricity. This is the highest rate of all EU countries.
It said the gap between wholesale electricity and retail prices in some countries is large because recent falls in wholesale costs have only partially been passed on to customers.
Figures from the Central Statistics Office show that Irish wholesale energy prices are 71pc lower than in 2022 at the height of the energy crisis.
More than a million households face electricity price hikes this month as Energia, Bord Gáis and SSE Airtricity raise prices.
Ms Boylan said the IEA report has shown up deep structural failures in how our energy market is run.
“It exposes the profiteering by energy companies who have shamelessly turned a global crisis into a racket,” she said.
“They hiked prices overnight when costs rose, but when prices collapsed again, they banked the gains. This is price gouging, plain and simple.
“Ireland doesn’t just have some of the highest electricity prices in Europe. It has the largest gap between what power actually costs and what consumers pay.”
She said that in Ireland, when wholesale prices fell sharply in 2023 and 2024, suppliers kept prices high.
Asked about price gouging, the Electricity Association of Ireland referred to a recent finding by the energy regulator that it has not seen evidence of windfall profits in the retail market.
CEO of the representative body, Dara Lynott, blamed high gas prices.
He said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sent wholesale price surging. And this country has become increasingly reliant on imported gas to produce electricity.
“Irish household electricity bills almost doubled, climbing from around €2,000 to approximately €4,000 annually,” Mr Lynott said.
“While prices have eased slightly, households here still pay more for electricity than the EU average.
“In Ireland and across the EU, wholesale electricity prices track the price of natural gas and therefore our energy market is particularly exposed to global gas price volatility.”
In other news, grass is green.
Whatever politician forces a change here and halves (not unreasonable if we have a 3x increase today) the cost of electricity, will secure my future votes.
While providing zero actual value.
Why is such essential service not state owned?
It’s not like competition is driving prices down here.
We have an energy regulator apparently….
https://www.cru.ie/regulations-policy/energy/revenues-and-tariffs/
In general the opening of the market here has been a huge negative for consumers. Instead of driving prices down they’ve gone way up.
greatest little country to do business
The government and energy companies will continue to deny the obvious
Man stop voting for clowns like Martin and Simon Harris otherwise nothing will change.
This is an old big bear of mine. A little history… We have close to, if not the most costly energy prices in Europe. I think we all agree with that. Ireland’s energy market liberalisation proceeded in stages beginning in February 2000 as the retail and wholesale sectors were gradually restructured to enable competition. tThis was done by making the ESB gradually artificially increase its unit price up to the opening of the market. This introduction of competition was to reduce the cost to the consumer by creating an opportunity for different suppliers to enter the market and hence create a competitive market. However it’s my view that the scale of population is too small to merit the individual company invested in one power station, typically €1m+ per MW and a typical power station producing approx 450mw. The ESB did very well pre 2000. The country is too small to have a healthy energy market as an Island nation. We just couldn’t fit the model of competition set out by Europe for Europe to merit cost input at scale prices at the time. We should have just kept it with the ESB who had some of the cheapest prices in Europe and were a damn fine company to boot at the time.
Also with the growth of solar panels their output is directly effecting the consumer consumption from the energy provider who wants to keep their profit margins in growth for their shareholders.
We are nationally in a transition phase which will take decades to equalise. We need a larger population and industrial output to warrant the financial investment required for independent power producers.
And don’t forget the extra levy’s we are paying for Wind and Grid investment. Don’t get me started here. It’s been an absolute joke for the last 25 years and we are literally paying the price now.