The Central Statistics Office (CSO) reports reveal a significant drop in wholesale electricity prices, declining over 72 per cent since the height of the energy price surge. Although the prices remained stable in June compared to May, they were 8 per cent less than the corresponding month in the previous year.
According to the CSO, there was a 40.7 per cent drop in electricity prices compared to June 2022 and a 72.2 per cent drop compared to August 2022. These prices had ballooned due to the Covid-19 pandemic, further inflating after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The zenith of these prices was reached in August 2022, with a 195 per cent spike in wholesale electricity prices between August 2021 and August 2022. The wholesale price of electricity soared close to €400 per MWh (megawatt hour), a stark contrast to the €38 per MWh average in 2020.
The acceleration in the decrease of Ireland’s headline inflation, and that in the eurozone, is credited to the reduction in energy prices. As per the CSO’s consumer price index, the headline rate of inflation in the Republic saw a slump, slipping to 2.2 per cent in June.
Additional CSO figures disclose that domestic producer prices for manufactured goods in June were on average 1 per cent less than the same time last year, while producer prices for exported goods rose by 2.9 per cent. In a span of 12 months up until June, the producer prices for food products were reported to have fallen by 4.4 per cent, as confirmed by the CSO.