What was claimed<\/p>\n
The UK\u2019s electricity is the most expensive in the world.<\/p>\n
Our verdict<\/p>\n
This could do with some context. Official government figures show the UK has the highest industrial electricity prices compared to International Energy Agency and EU member states, but not necessarily the highest domestic prices. Additionally, this data only looks at a range of other developed economies.<\/p>\n
In an interview on BBC Radio 4\u2019s Political Thinking podcast, shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho MP claimed the UK\u2019s electricity is \u201cthe most expensive in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ms Coutinho also claimed<\/a> on the BBC\u2019s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on 19 October that the UK has \u201cthe most expensive electricity in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t receive a response when we asked Ms Coutinho what this claim is based on, but she may have been referring to data published by the government which compares electricity prices for members of the International Energy Agency (IEA), as well as the EU.<\/p>\n There are currently 27 EU member states and 32 IEA members<\/a>\u2014including two dozen European countries (some of which are also EU members), as well as Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Turkey and the United States.<\/p>\n So this data is by no means comparing the UK to every other country in the world (for example there are no African or South American IEA members), but instead offers a comparison with a range of other developed economies.<\/p>\n Join 72,953 people who trust us to check the facts<\/p>\n Sign up to get weekly updates on politics, immigration, health and more.<\/p>\n \nSubscribe to weekly email newsletters from Full Fact for updates on politics, immigration, health and more. What does the data show?<\/p>\n The latest data published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) compares annual electricity prices for industrial<\/a> and domestic<\/a> consumers, both including and excluding taxes.<\/p>\n Figures for 2024 show that the UK had the highest industrial electricity prices of all IEA members data is available for, both including and excluding taxes.<\/p>\n For domestic consumers, the UK had the highest electricity prices excluding taxes, and the second highest (behind Germany) including taxes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth noting that not all member countries provide data for all categories.<\/p>\n These figures are shown in pence per kilowatt-hour (kWh), with prices converted to pounds using average annual exchange rates.<\/p>\n Data for EU member states, meanwhile, is broken down by small, medium and large customers for domestic consumers<\/a>, and small, medium, large and very large customers for industrial consumers<\/a>.<\/p>\n These figures show that in 2024 the UK had the highest prices for industrial consumers in all but one category (small-size customers, excluding taxes), but it did not have the highest price in any category for domestic consumers.<\/p>\n Ireland generally had higher domestic electricity prices excluding taxes, while Germany generally had higher domestic prices including taxes. A few other countries also had prices higher than those of the UK in some categories.<\/p>\n These prices are calculated as the unweighted average of two six-month periods (January-June and July-December), and are converted into pounds using exchange rates at the time of publication. They\u2019re therefore not directly comparable with the figures produced for IEA members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What was claimed The UK\u2019s electricity is the most expensive in the world. Our verdict This could do…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-223811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOur fact checks are free to read but not to produce, so you will also get occasional emails about fundraising
\nand other ways you can help. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information about how we use your data
\nsee our Privacy Policy<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n