Europe drastically cut its energy consumption this winter

ROCKETS, BULLETS and shells have been Vladimir Putin’s weapons of choice in Ukraine. In the rest of Europe, Russia’s president has resorted to tightening the gas taps. Russia used to supply 40-50% of the EU’s natural-gas imports—a reliance that meant Mr Putin’s war on his neighbour wreaked havoc on energy markets. Amid fears of a shortage, the EU set a target in August to reduce natural-gas consumption by 15% over the winter (it recently announced this would remain in place for the next 12 months, too). Data released in late March by Bruegel, an economic think-tank in Brussels, showed that it met its initial target (see chart). Gas demand from the beginning of December 2022 to the end of February 2023 was 16% lower than the average for that period between 2019 and 2021. But was this a product of good European planning, or a fortunately mild winter? To find out, The Economist built a statistical model.

Demand for gas over the dark winter months is usually more than double the demand over the summer. If temperatures fall by just 1℃, the average person in Europe will increase their daily energy consumption by around 1.2kWH, or 4.6% of the daily average for the year. For much of the continent, this winter was warmer than recent years’, meaning that some reduction in gas consumption from the norm would have been expected, regardless of the war in the east.

We trained our model to predict the daily average gas demand per person for 26 countries (Britain and all EU member states except Malta and Cyprus, which use little or no gas), for each winter month between January 2013 and February 2022. After the model had learned the relationship between temperatures and gas demand, we gave it real temperatures from this winter and asked it to predict how gas usage might have played out had Russia not sparked an energy crisis.

The model showed that temperatures alone explain only around a third of the true reduction in gas demand this winter. After accounting for the weather, Europeans still reduced their gas use by around 12%. In absolute terms, the Netherlands, Britain and Germany cut back by the most: gas usage per person was 24% lower in the Netherlands, 18% lower in Britain and 7% lower in Germany, compared with predicted levels.

Much of this was because of rising costs. In December gas bills for European households were up by 60% compared with the year before—Britain, Germany and the Netherlands were among the most affected. As a result, many households and businesses scaled back their energy use. Some industrial operations switched to using oil instead of gas, and energy-intensive products that would normally be produced in the bloc were imported instead. Energy efficiency also played a small role. The International Energy Agency estimates that improvements to buildings’ energy performance, as well as boiler replacements and the installation of heat pumps, accounted for a 1.2% reduction in gas use last year.

Some of the reduction might be sustainable for future years. But drastic cutbacks or a switch to dirtier fuel alternatives are likely to come at a cost to the economy, the environment and people’s health (our previous analysis has predicted a sharp rise in winter deaths associated with high energy prices). Putin’s grip on Europe may look weaker than expected. But the continent needs long-term solutions to ease its tight energy supply.■