The cold days are already beginning to feel in Uruguay, and energy prices in the country are once again a central issue in family economies, compared to the need for heating. In that sense, the increase of a price in particular has the attention of Uruguayans: the firewood.
Firewood is the main source of energy used for heating in Uruguay, so its price is an important factor in homes with the arrival of winter and the lowest temperatures that can already be felt in mid-autumn. In this sense, the last Energy Indicators report produced by SEG Engineering which you accessed scope.com realized an increase in this product of 2.13% during April.
At the same time —and mainly driven by the rise in firewood—, the value of residential energy once again experienced an increase during the past month, according to the evolution of the cost of final consumption prepared from data from the Energy Directorate of the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining (MIEM); although this increase was less than the one it had in last February and March. In this way, the Residential Energy Price Index had a interannual variation of 7.20% and intermonthly of 0.23%.
In April, the average residential energy basket was 3,747.6 pesos, when a year ago it was 3,519.9 pesos.
What is the energy profile of Uruguay?
The main destination of energy in the country is heating, accumulating 32% of residential consumption —cooking food represents 28% and heating water, 18%—; and firewood is the main source of energy used for this function. Hence the importance behind its increase during the beginning of the periods of greatest demand.
According to the data of the Continuous Household Survey (ECH) of the National Statistics Institute (INE)in 2022 the 45.9% of households chose firewood as the main source of energy for heating environments, with electricity being the second option chosen, although far behind, with 23.6%. Supergas established itself as the third alternative in terms of popularity, chosen by 19.8% of households. The interior of the country is the area where the choice for firewood predominates, while Montevideo has electrical preference.
This is mainly due to the high costs of electricity in the country, which has the highest prices in the region for this input, with a value of $288 per megawatt (MWh) for the residential rate, according to the latest report from SEG Ingeniería. He supergas, for its part, it costs $1.89 per kilo.
However, almost half of Uruguayan households already have air-conditioning (46.1%). This trend also corresponds to an improvement in energy efficiency in terms of heating systems, since the estimated cost to heat a room of 15 square meters is 579 pesos per month.
For households, the next lowest cost option is firewood in high-performance stoves, which costs 821 pesos per month. At the other extreme, firewood in conventional open stoves costs 2,052 pesos per month.
Source: Ambito
