In its new ‘Power Barometer’ report, the association representing the European electricity industry, Eurelectric, revealed on Tuesday 23 September that the increase in the share of clean and renewable sources, combined with stagnant demand, has brought average wholesale prices in the EU down to €82/MWh in 2024, compared with the peak of €227/MWh reached in 2022. However, major challenges remain, particularly in terms of price volatility, investment in clean energy and electrification rates.
The share of electricity in the EU’s total final energy consumption has stagnated at around 23% for the past 10 years, while China’s electrification rate has steadily increased by almost four percentage points per year (to reach almost 30%), the report states.
This stagnation in the EU is linked to the fact that demand for electricity is growing slowly. It rose by just 1% in 2024, still 7% below 2021 levels. “This shows that the EU is still recovering from the forced savings resulting from the energy price crisis”, comments Eurelectric.
The report also looks at persistently high gas prices, which are having a lasting effect on energy-intensive industries, and stresses the need to develop a decarbonised and flexible network, which will help industries to migrate to electric solutions and remain competitive.
As far as grid flexibility is concerned, the EU has only 5.4 GW of grid-scale batteries installed, compared with at least 60 GW needed by 2030, says Eurelectric.
In particular, greater flexibility is needed to cope with negative electricity prices, caused by low demand and high production of renewable energies. The report also points out that in 2025, negative prices were observed in an average of 4.5% of hours, compared with just 0.5% in 2019.
Other problems mentioned in the report concern the disparity of price peaks between regions and the impact of the massive development of data centres.
To see the report: https://aeur.eu/f/iki (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)