Archive:Energy prices come of age

Published in Sigma - The Bulletin of European Statistics, 2007/02

‘The methodology for the prices data collection in a liberalised market and what energy prices should cover, had to reflect the fact that real prices are set by market forces’, says Peter Tavoularidis, Head of Eurostat’s Energy statistics Unit G4 (first on the right). Here he can be seen with Emmanuel Clement (left) and John Goerten (middle) responsible for energy prices in Eurostat. Photo: Christine Ardillac

Eurostat has collected electricity and natural gas prices for over two decades. With the progress of energy market liberalisation, to be fully completed by mid-2007, the methodology for the collection of energy prices had to be adapted. So a new methodology for energy prices collection was agreed by Member States in 2006.

Introduction

The first directive for the collection of energy prices was approved in 1990. It covered prices charged to industrial consumers only; household energy prices were only provided on a voluntary basis. Back then, the process of liberalisation of the European energy market was just starting, basically in the United Kingdom. The price statistics at the time were collected on the basis of tariffs for standard consumers. Consumers paid a fixed tariff based on their key consumption characteristics: annual consumption, voltage and the so-called ‘load factor’ (number of hours consumed per days).

As the liberalisation process progressed, the notion of tariffs, especially for industries, did not make much sense. ‘The methodology for the prices data collection in a liberalised market and what energy prices should cover had to reflect the fact that real prices are set by market forces and are not the fixed tariffs used in the past’, says Peter Tavoularidis, Head of Eurostat’s Energy Statistics Unit.

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