These are Energy-Control Austria, the Hungarian Energy and Utilities Regulatory Authority (MEKH) and the Finnish consultant VaasaETT. “Our price survey now includes all EU member states, as well as some members of the European Energy Community (Montenegro, Norway, Serbia and Ukraine), plus Britain and Switzerland.”
That’s good, their latest study is fresh. It is dated September 30 and compares the prices charged in September for gas and electricity. Between July 2015 and September 2022, the price of natural gas in Europe went from an index of 100 to an index… of 312! For electricity, we went from 100 to 264. “In one year, from September 2021 to September 2022, the average increase for the 33 countries is +128% for gas bills and +70% for those of electricity”.
In the world flop
In September this year, the capitals with the highest electricity bills were Amsterdam (66.73c/kWh), Copenhagen (66.10c/kWh), Tallinn (59.28c/kWh), Berlin ( 54.86c/kWh) and… Brussels (53.96c/kWh). The average for the 33 capitals is 31.59c/kWh. In London, we pay 39.51c/kWh, in Paris 27.72c/kWh and in Luxembourg 21.41c/kWh. If we take consumer purchasing power into account, Belgium is the 8th country to pay the most expensive electricity, behind Estonia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark and Germany.
It should be noted, however, that the “globalpetrolprices.com” site places Belgium in third position among the countries in the world where electricity is the most expensive, behind Denmark and Germany and ahead of Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica!
For gas, we would be a little better off. “Compared to August, gas storage targets in Belgium were largely exceeded this month, with supply sufficiently meeting domestic demand, which resulted in lower prices for Belgian households,” analyze the investigators. In Brussels, we paid the kWh of gas at the price of 16.30 euro cents. This is much less than in Amsterdam (42.08), Copenhagen (40.03), Tallinn (38.21), Athens (27.68) or Vienna (27.24). The average for the 33 European countries is 16.32 c/kWh.
For gas, the “globalpetrolprices.com” site places Belgium in tenth position worldwide, far behind our northern neighbour. If the Dutch pay a lot of money, we know that their houses are generally much newer than ours. “And there are a lot more houses with two facades and smaller than here,” a CREG specialist reminded us recently.
Remember, finally, that according to the Molinari Institute, Belgians are the third most taxed in the EU, behind the Austrians and the French…