Government subsidies were introduced in 2022 as a response to a substantial increase in electricity prices. Residential electricity customers received two payments of €200 each to offset their 2022 electricity bill costs. These payments were administered directly by electricity suppliers as part of the billing process. They have been included in the residential electricity prices used in this release. There were no similar government subsidies for residential gas.
A Temporary Business Energy Support Scheme (TBESS) was introduced to support businesses with increases in their electricity and natural gas bill costs in 2022. The TBESS payments were administered by the Revenue Commissioners and paid outside of the utility billing system. Hence, they are not included in the prices used in this release.
The gas bills in this release do not include natural gas used by power plants. Power plants accounted for 65% of networked gas consumption in 2022. The electricity bills do not include meters for very large energy users. The reason for excluding these very high electricity and gas consumption customers is because the weighted prices provided by energy suppliers may not be appropriate to this very small group of customers. Please refer to the Background Notes for more information on the release methodology.
The median residential electricity bill fell by 28%, or €359, to €909 in 2022 (See Table 1A, Figure 1 and Advisory Note above).
Conversely, the median residential bill for gas rose by 31%, or €232, to €972 in 2022 (See Table 1B and Figure 1).
The percentage of households paying less than €1,500 per year for electricity increased from 65% in 2021 to 79% in 2022 (See Figure 2 and Table 2C).
Around 53% of households that paid between €750 and €1,000 for electricity in 2021 paid between €500 and €750 in 2022, while a further 29% paid less than €500 in 2022 (See Table 2A).
The percentage of households paying less than €1,500 for gas reduced from 92% to 79% in 2022 (See Table 2D).
A total of 40% of households that paid between €500 and €750 for gas in 2021 paid between €750 and €1,000 in 2022. A further 23% of them paid over €1,000 in 2022 (See Table 2B).
The highest median residential electricity bill costs by county in 2022 were in Kildare (€1,043), Meath (€1,027) and Wicklow (€1,007), while the lowest were in Donegal (€746), Leitrim (€768) and Mayo (€826) (See Table 1A).
The residential median bill costs for electricity and gas are the mid-points of all annual bills after sorting them in bill cost order.
| Electricity | Gas | |
| 2015 | 1095 | 746 |
| 2016 | 1030 | 702 |
| 2017 | 1051 | 670 |
| 2018 | 1109 | 782 |
| 2019 | 1040 | 752 |
| 2020 | 1112 | 760 |
| 2021 | 1268 | 740 |
| 2022 | 909 | 972 |
| 2021 | 2022 | |
| €1 < €500 | 179.939 | 431.343 |
| €500 < €750 | 205.108 | 355.48 |
| €750 < €1,000 | 332.796 | 362.099 |
| €1,000 < €1,500 | 628.052 | 490.689 |
| €1,500 < €2,000 | 476.027 | 237.047 |
| €2,000 < €3,000 | 202.98 | 141.426 |
| €3,000 or more | 55.699 | 62.517 |
| 2021 | 2022 | |
| €1 < €500 | 166.679 | 106.745 |
| €500 < €750 | 173.486 | 112.998 |
| €750 < €1,000 | 140.529 | 126.333 |
| €1,000 < €1,500 | 138.753 | 181.615 |
| €1,500 < €2,000 | 34.429 | 87.15 |
| €2,000 < €3,000 | 13.168 | 43.439 |
| €3,000 or more | 4.226 | 12.99 |
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (04 December 2023) released Trends in Metered Electricity and Gas Bills 2022.
Commenting on the release, Kevin Hunt, Statistician in the Environment and Climate Division, said: "This release combines weighted average prices for electricity and gas final consumption from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) (See Tables 5A, 5B, 5C, and 5D) with metered consumption from ESB Networks and Gas Networks Ireland. These combined files provide meter-level estimates of bill costs for 2015 to 2022. The Advisory Note above and Background Notes give more details on customer types, prices, allowances and exclusions.
Median Residential Electricity and Gas Bills
The median residential electricity bill fell by 28%, or €359, to €909 in 2022 compared with 2021 (See Table 1A and Figure 1). The median residential bill for gas in 2022 rose by 31% or €232, to €972, across the state (See Table 1B and Figure 1). Please refer to the Advisory Note at the top of this release for information on electricity prices in 2022.
Residential Electricity Bill Costs
The percentage of households paying under €500 for electricity increased from 9% in 2021 to 22% in 2022 (See Table 2C and Figure 2). In total, 79% of households paid under €1,500 for electricity in 2022, compared with 65% in 2021 (See Table 2C).
Of the households which paid between €1,000 and €1,500 in 2021, 42% of them paid between €750 and €1,000 in 2022 (See Table 2A). A further 19% paid between €500 and €750 in 2022, while 4% paid less than €500 in 2022. Similarly, among households paying between €750 and €1,000 in 2021, 53% paid between €500 and €750 in 2022, and 29% paid less than €500 in 2022 (See Table 2A).
Residential Gas Bill Costs
Households paying under €1,500 for gas decreased to 79% of the total in 2022, compared with 92% in 2021 (See Table 2D and Figure 3). For households that paid between €500 and €750 for gas in 2021, 30% stayed in that cost band in 2022, while 40% of them paid between €750 and €1,000. A further 23% paid more than €1,000 in 2022. Of the households that paid between €750 and €1,000 in 2021, 23% remained in that range in 2022, 58% increased their bills to between €1,000 and €1,500 in 2022, and 10% of them paid more than €1,500 in 2022 (See Table 2B).
Non-Residential Electricity and Gas Bill Costs
Among non-residential electricity customers paying between €2,000 and €3,000 in 2021, 30% stayed within that range in 2022, 47% saw bills increase to between €3,000 and €5,000 in 2022, and a further 13% had bills higher than €5,000 in 2022 (See Table 3A). For non-residential gas customers, out of those paying between €2,000 and €3,000 in 2021, 11% stayed in the same cost band in 2022, 46% moved up one cost band in 2022 (to €3,000<€5,000), 30% moved up two cost bands in 2022 (to €5,000<€10,000), and 7% paid more than €10,000 in 2022 (See Table 3B). The percentage of non-residential customers paying more than €10,000 for gas rose from 19% in 2021 to 32% in 2022 (See Table 3D).
County Analysis
The highest median residential electricity bill costs by county were in Kildare (€1,043), Meath (€1,027) and Wicklow (€1,007), while the lowest were in Donegal (€746), Leitrim (€768) and Mayo (€826) (See Table 1A). Excluding counties with negligibly low numbers of gas meters (Kerry, Longford, Roscommon and Wexford), the highest median residential gas bills were in Cavan (€1,042), Dublin (€1,037) and Meath (€1,016). The lowest were in Waterford (€797), Cork (€798), and Mayo (€847) (see Table 1B). The highest percentage increases in median residential gas bills were seen in Mayo (41%) and Galway (38%) (See Table 1B)."