The EU price cap on gas is 43.99 euros per mega watt hour. The UK is £263.99 per mega watt hour.
This is not true. The EU has not set a gas price cap for its members. The UK’s price cap on gas for domestic consumers is well below £263.99 per mWh.
A claim repeated by a number of Facebook and Twitter accounts states that the European Union has set a lower price cap on gas than the UK.
The post states: “The EU price cap on gas is 43.99 Euros per mega watt hour [MWh]. The UK is £263.79 per mega watt hour.” A megawatt hour is a measurement of electric output.
The EU has not set a price cap on gas for member countries. It’s not entirely clear what the figure mentioned in this post is based on.
It’s possible that the post could be referring to a policy recently introduced by Spain and Portugal in an effort to lower electricity prices in the Iberian peninsula. The policy, which was approved by the European Commission in June 2022, will see electricity producers that use gas to generate electricity given a daily payment “calculated based on the price difference between the market price of natural gas and a gas price cap set at an average of €48.8/MWh.”
However, this price cap was not arranged by the EU, and does not apply to all EU member states. Indeed, in several European countries the price of energy is reaching record highs.
The figure of £263.79 is also not an accurate figure for the UK price cap on gas, which applies to most domestic consumers.
This figure appears to refer to Ofgem’s figure for the average price of a MWh of electricity under a “day-ahead baseload contract” in March 2022 in Great Britain. This is the amount energy suppliers pay for wholesale electricity, not domestic consumers.
As of August 12 2022, when the tweet seen in this post was first shared, the wholesale day-ahead price of gas in Great Britain was reported to be £3.40 per therm [a unit of measurement for natural gas use], equivalent to around £116 per MWh.
The current price cap on gas—the maximum amount households pay for gas—is £0.07 per kWh, and is expected to rise in the coming months, with a new price cap set to be announced by Ofgem on Friday, 26 August. The current cap is equivalent to £70 per MWh, though this price doesn’t include the standing charge gas customers pay each day, regardless of how much gas they use.
One Twitter account which shared the claim added: “To be clear individual countries who are members of the EU have set retail price caps substantially below those of the UK.”
It is true that energy bills for UK households have risen faster than in many EU countries, however, this is not because the EU has established a lower price cap on energy than the UK.
Instead, experts say that a combination of factors are responsible for the difference in prices, some of which is explained by the way energy supply works in the UK compared to in Europe, but also due to the different approaches by governments when it comes to protecting consumers from price rises.
Image courtesy of anologicus
Correction 26 August 2022
We’ve updated this piece to reflect the correct abbreviation of megawatt hour (MWh)
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the EU has not set a gas price cap for its members. The UK’s price cap on gas for domestic consumers is well below £263.99 per mWh.
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