Looking at energy

@energy

Back in August I stated that the rise in energy costs in Ireland were due to the rise in wholesale gas prices. How does that look now?

Context

In 2021, natural gas was used to generate ~30% of irish electricity.
We had a large amount of indigenous gas production from the Corrib gas fields since 2016, at about 50% of electricity generation. But this is all being scaled down and the hope is to replace it with renewables rather than imported gas.
Prior to 2015 Ireland’s import dependency (percentage of generation due to imports, assuming) was 90%. In 2021 it was 80% so it’s climbing back up. https://www.seai.ie/publications/Energy-in-Ireland-2022.pdf
In 2021, gas was about 50% of our electricity generation (same source).

Gas markets operate through contracts. The pricing mechanism varies, from what’s called hub pricing, which is what seems to be regular supply/demand pricing and oil indexation which seems to lock in some sort of price (unsure on this).
In the last couple years the first pricing has become more prominent.
In Europe, 80% of gas is traded (in the form of contracts) at the Dutch trading hub.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/how-natural-gas-is-traded-europe-2022-12-20/

Ireland’s electricity is around 27c/kwh https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-statistics/prices/
It hasn’t been below say 23c since before 2020. It’s been gradually rising for the last decade.
The price of gas is having a disproportionate affect on this but ultimately, how much it’s moving the needle is questionable.