The Programme for Government commits to providing the reliable supply of safe, secure and clean energy in order to deliver a phase-out of fossil fuels. This means Ireland must deliver on its commitment to reach 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and that this must be planned and delivered in a cost-effective way that minimises costs to consumers. The Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland’s (SEAI) report on Electricity and Gas Prices in Ireland (July – December) 2019 sets out the breakdown of electricity prices based on energy & supply, network costs, renewable taxes, capacity taxes, environmental taxes and other costs. Section 4.1.6 on page 40 of the report provides a breakdown of costs to non-households (business). Table 28 shows the breakdown of these costs for all EU member states in terms of cent per kilowatt hour. The report is available online at https://www.seai.ie/publications/Price-Directive-2nd-Semester-2019.pdf.
The SEAI, in their Energy in Ireland – 2019 report (Table 23, Page 58), show that electricity prices to Irish industry fell by 5% in real terms between 2015 and 2018. The fuel mix for electricity generation is one factor that has a key bearing on the variation in the price of electricity. In the EU, Ireland has a high overall dependency for electricity generation on fossil fuels, at 70%.
Since 2015, energy prices in Ireland have increased by 2.5% in real terms, compared with an average increase of 0.6% in OECD Europe member countries, and a 7.9% increase in the United States over the same period based on data from the International Energy Agency (IEA). In 2018, overall energy prices in Ireland were 2% higher than in 2017, compared with an increase of 4% in OECD Europe and a 7% increase in the U.S.