This report - funded by the Community Foundation for Ireland - explores the issue of energy poverty and deprivation in Ireland, once again to the forefront of the policy debate given recent increases in energy prices.

Energy subsidies are common. Costs are commonly recovered via an often arbitrarily set uniform consumer levy or electricity price surcharge. We show that an electricity price surcharge is optimal for an Irish case study, despite obvious price distortions. The outcome holds across both first and...

Energy subsidies are common. This letter establishes that the method of cost recovery has important implications for household welfare. We use an analytical model to elicit the conditions under which household welfare losses are minimised by each of three common cost recovery methods. We...

This report - funded by the Community Foundation for Ireland - explores the issue of energy poverty and deprivation in Ireland, once again to the forefront of the policy debate given recent increases in energy prices.