An energy expert has explained how Ireland’s indirect connections to Russia will affect the price of your gas bill in the coming months.
Russia supplies about a third of Europe’s natural gas however, Ireland is not directly dependent on Russian gas.
Speaking on RTE's Prime Time on Thursday night, Dr Muireann Lynch, energy economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), said that despite this we will still see an increase in Irish household bills as wholesale gas prices are "set at a global level".
Dr Lynch said: “We don’t have a direct connection to Russia, it’s true. Any of the molecules of gas that are burned in an Irish home and an Irish boiler or in an Irish electricity generation station, it’s very unlikely that one of them came from Russia itself.
“But we are connected via other countries to Russia and because wholesale prices for all fossil fuels, whether it’s oil or gas, tend to be set at a global level we are exposed to it through these price mechanisms.
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“We’ve already seen very high increases in gas prices and of course people have felt that in their home heating bills.
“And then also the fact that nearly 50% of our electricity is generated by gas. But even when it’s not generated by gas, gas can still set the price.
“So what that means is we will see these increases in wholesale gas prices and wholesale electricity prices feeding through to household bills within the next few months, for sure.”
Dr Lynch said that there were only two small changes Irish consumers could make in the "short run" to reduce their high gas bills.
“It takes time to shift from one mode of energy to another," she told Prime Time presenter Miriam O'Callaghan. "You can shift a little bit from one fuel to another but the problem is all fossil fuels are coming under this pressure at the moment.
“In order to switch from one type of energy to another, for example to switch from a gas boiler to a heat pump, it typically involves large investments and investments take time.
“In the short run, the only things that people really can do are the usual things that are in our hands; you can switch your energy supplier, you can try to decrease your home energy usage.
“But unfortunately an awful lot of our energy is not easily substituted so we just have to pay the higher price in the meantime.”
