Brussels, 10/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - In 2013, energy consumption returned to the level of the early 1990s, a fall of 9.1% from its 2006 peak, Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, announced on Monday 9 February.
Gross energy consumption in the EU was 1,666 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe), against 1,832 Mtoe in 2006. 46.8% of demand was met by domestic production, amounting to 790 Mtoe of energy. Nuclear energy (29%) provided the largest share, ahead of renewable (24%), solid fuels (20%), gas (17%), oil (9%) and non-renewable wastes (1%). France remained the largest energy producer (17% of total energy production in the EU), followed by Germany (15%), the United Kingdom (14%), Poland (9%) and the Netherlands (9%).
In 13 member states, 70% or more of the energy production comes from a single type of fuel. After Cyprus and Malta (both 100.0%), the highest shares of energy production from renewable sources were recorded in Latvia (99.7%), Portugal (97.5%), Lithuania (91.1%), Austria (78.2%) and Luxembourg (76.4%). Solid fuels were largely predominant in Poland (80.5%), Estonia (78.3%) and Greece (72.3%), while France (80.9%) and Belgium (75.2%) were highly dependent on nuclear energy production. With an 88.7% share, gas represented the main type of energy production only in the Netherlands.
The EU remains dependent on imports for 53.2% of its energy consumption. In 2013, the least dependent on imports were Estonia (11.9%), Denmark (12.3%), Romania (18.6%), Poland (25.8%), the Netherlands (26.0%) and the Czech Republic (27.9%), while the most dependent were Malta (104,0%), Luxembourg (96.9%), Cyprus (96.4%) and Ireland (89,1%). Among the five member states consuming the largest amounts of energy, the least dependent on energy imports were the United Kingdom (46.4%) and France (47.9%), in contrast to Germany (62.7%), Spain (70.5%) and Italy (76.9%). (Emmanuel Hagry)