Falling energy costs in the UK have led to a sharp fall in inflation, but Britons still pay the highest electricity bills in Europe, INews reports.
According to the Household Electricity Price Index (Hepi), Ireland and the UK topped the list of the most expensive household electricity prices in Europe last month.
The cost of electricity including taxes was 48.94 euro cents per kilowatt hour (c€/kWh) in Dublin and 41.25 c€/kWh in London, according to an index comparing prices in European capital cities.
According to the calculations, London residents paid €99 (£86) for electricity for the average UK home last month. This is down from last year’s figure for October, when electricity bills were around €102 (£89). Germany had the third highest electricity cost (€39.35/kWh), followed by Italy (€38.09/kWh), Denmark (€37.40/kWh) and the Czech Republic (€37.11/kWh).
Hepi reports that if average households in other countries consumed the same amount of electricity as in the UK, prices last month would have been around €95 (£83) in Berlin, €92 (£80) in Rome, €70 (£61) in Paris and €52 (£45) in Madrid, according to INews.
In terms of natural gas prices, the UK fared better, at around €9.69/kWh last month, cheaper than Germany (€10.97/kWh), France (€10.97/kWh), Spain (€9.97/kWh) and Italy (€14.67/kWh).
Rafaila Grigoriu, Hepi project manager and head of IT at VaasaETT, the Finnish energy consultancy that compiled the data, stressed that since the price caps are updated quarterly, prices are expected to remain the same until the end of the year. However, she warned that electricity prices could rise in early 2024. She said:
Given the start of the heating season – which has been starting later this year due to the warm autumn – and also the Middle East crisis, a price increase is expected [in the next quarter]. But the price is expected to remain lower than the same period last year. We will know more on that when the price cap is announced.
In terms of natural gas prices, the situation in the UK was more favourable, with last month’s price of around €9.69/kWh, cheaper than Germany (€10.97/kWh), France (€10.97/kWh), Spain (€9.97/kWh) and Italy (€14.67/kWh).
Electricity and natural gas prices in the UK have followed a steady downward trend since February 2023. Rafaila Grigoriu added:
Which is definitely quite promising and the price cap has a lot to do with that.
Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is included in a database of 33 European capitals and is considered the cheapest city for electricity (€4.22/kWh) and gas (€1.97/kWh), but Ms Grigoriou said the figure had not been updated since the war began in February 2022 due to difficulties in contacting local experts. Rafaila Grigoriu noted:
We are currently researching on that and next month’s release will include updated prices for Ukraine.
After Kyiv, the cheapest city in terms of electricity prices was Oslo in Norway (€5.92/kWh), followed by Budapest in Hungary (€9.61/kWh), Belgrade in Serbia (€9.76/kWh) and Podgorica in Montenegro (€10.46/kWh), INews reports.
Gas prices were significantly lower than electricity tariffs across Europe, and for most countries they were significantly lower than a year ago, when energy inflation reached record levels following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
Among the countries with the cheapest gas prices were Hungary (2.64 cents/kWh), Serbia (4.22 cents/kWh), Croatia (4.61 cents/kWh) and Slovakia (6.13 cents/kWh).
