Does the UK have the ‘most expensive’ electricity in the world?

In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking podcast, shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho MP claimed the UK’s electricity is “the most expensive in the world”.

Ms Coutinho also claimed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on 19 October that the UK has “the most expensive electricity in the world”.

We didn’t 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.

There are currently 27 EU member states and 32 IEA members—including 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.

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.

What does the data show?

The latest data published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) compares annual electricity prices for industrial and domestic consumers, both including and excluding taxes.

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.

For domestic consumers, the UK had the highest electricity prices excluding taxes, and the second highest (behind Germany) including taxes.

It’s worth noting that not all member countries provide data for all categories.

These figures are shown in pence per kilowatt-hour (kWh), with prices converted to pounds using average annual exchange rates.

Data for EU member states, meanwhile, is broken down by small, medium and large customers for domestic consumers, and small, medium, large and very large customers for industrial consumers.

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.

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.

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’re therefore not directly comparable with the figures produced for IEA members.