The European Union’s largest electricity consumer per capita is France. With an annual consumption of over 7,000 kilowatt hours per capita, it is also the sixth largest in the world. Oil is still the most commonly sourced fuel for primary energy consumption across the EU. It is the only fossil fuel that had seen usage volumes increase since 2010. This is in spite of the EU urging member states to radically improve greenhouse gas emissions and a European climate law currently under consideration, which would make the European Green Deal a legal obligation for all members.
Germans pay the most for electricity worldwide. Including Germany, eight of the ten most expensive countries for electricity are part of the European Union (counting the United Kingdom). German households with an annual consumption of less than 2,500 kilowatt hours, paid 34.53 euro cents per kilowatt hour in 2019. Generally, household electricity prices increased across the whole of the EU, whereas household natural gas prices have become cheaper again in recent years.
Residential customers typically have to pay more for energy than industrial customers. This is true for both electricity and natural gas. In 2019, Industrial electricity prices were cheapest in Sweden, at 5.27 euro cents per kilowatt hour for those with an annual consumption between 20,000 and 70,000 megawatts. However, the opposite was true for natural gas, with industry gas prices in Sweden the most expensive in the EU.
