Less gas, more coal: Energy consumption lower than it has been since 1990

The year isn’t quite over yet. But experts have already extrapolated: Germany has not used as little energy as this year since reunification. In addition to the high price, this savings is probably also due to the weather.

According to a projection, energy consumption in Germany will fall this year to its lowest level since reunification in 1990. Compared to the previous year, consumption will fall by 4.7 percent to 11,829 petajoules, as reported by the Working Group on Energy Balances. The reasons for this are, among other things, price-related production cuts in individual economic sectors, savings by consumers due to higher prices and warmer weather compared to the previous year.

According to the survey, natural gas consumption fell by almost 15 percent to 96 million tons – the lowest level since 2014. The mild weather also played a major role here. The Working Group on Energy Balances attributes almost one percent of the overall decrease in energy consumption to the warmer weather compared to the previous year. “Adjusted for the influence of temperature, energy consumption in Germany would have fallen by only 3.9 percent in 2022.”

According to the estimate, mineral oil accounted for 35.2 percent of total primary energy consumption (previous year: 32.5 percent). Natural gas accounted for 23.8 percent (previous year: 26.6). Renewable energies achieved a share of 17.2 (previous year: 15.7) percent. Coal also increased: in 2022, lignite accounted for 10 percent (previous year: 9.1 percent) of total primary energy consumption.

“The additional use compensated for reduced contributions from other energy sources to generate electricity and heat,” it said. The proportion of hard coal in total energy consumption increased from 8.9 to 9.8 percent. Here, too, increased power generation played an important role. After the shutdown of three power plant units, however, the share of nuclear energy dropped significantly from 6.1 to 3.2 percent.

The Working Group on Energy Balances expects a drop in energy-related carbon dioxide emissions of around one percent. The substitution effects in the energy mix would have led to an increase in CO2 emissions. “However, this increase was below the saving resulting from the decrease in overall consumption.”