The Most Used Energy Sources in Europe

Much of Europe has set itself the goal of switching away from heavily polluting fossil fuels and towards renewable energy sources.

Our chart shows a snapshot of the energy landscape in Europe right now, using data from the Statistical Review of World Energy 2023. It reveals that while there’s some variation in energy types across the bloc, fossil fuels still make up the lion’s share of the energy sources the continent is most reliant on. Sweden and Norway are exceptions to the rule, standing out for their hydroelectric power usage, while Finland is nearly tied between oil and renewables consumption (0.33 and 0.32, respectively).

The 2022 map looks pretty different from the previous iteration. For example, France’s biggest source for energy consumption had been nuclear in 2021 rather than oil. According to Eurostat, France saw a drop in nuclear energy due to reactor maintenance and repairs. What this map fails to show, however, is that even with the decline, nuclear still made up around a third (31.6 percent) of the country’s energy mix in 2022, and was only just behind oil (34.7 percent).

The other notable difference is the shift away from natural gas as the biggest energy source in several countries, even if it still came in second position in many cases. This follows Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent rush in Europe to reduce dependency on Russian gas and to diversify energy sources.

For example, in 2021, natural gas was the biggest source of energy in the United Kingdom, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Turkey, Belarus and Russia. In 2022, this had dropped to just three countries - Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. That year, Ukraine had relied on natural gas and coal to a similar degree (0.98 exajoules and 0.95 exajoules, respectively). Ukraine’s overall consumption of fuel dropped from a total of 3.36 exajoules in 2021 to 2.33 exajoules in 2022. Even though natural gas became the biggest source of energy there, the country’s consumption of it was lower than the year before (0.98 exajoules in 2021, 0.69 exajoules in 2022).