This report provides comprehensive information to understand the evolution of energy prices and costs in the EU. It analyses the energy prices trends for electricity, gas and petroleum products, looking in detail at their market and regulatory drivers and providing international comparisons. It also assesses the importance and impact of energy costs for our economy, businesses and households. To achieve this, the report analyses the evolution of the EU’s energy import bill, the energy cost shares for more than 40 sectors from manufacturing, agriculture and services, and the impact of energy expenditure in household budgets across the different income levels. The report also looks at the importance of energy taxes as a source of tax revenues and at the various taxes imposed on energy products. Finally, it maps the different realised prices received by power generation technologies and analyses how they affect profitability together with other revenues sources and costs.

As in the 2016 and 2018 editions, the report relies on data and analysis from a combination of Commission works and external studies that allow to better understand energy prices and costs trends in Europe in recent years. Publicly available statistical information sources have been privileged in the report and complemented by a series of specific data collections where public data is overly aggregated or non-existent. Following the exit of the UK from the EU, the report focus on EU-27, which makes its statistics and analyses not fully comparable with previous editions. Energy subsidies, which were covered in the previous editions of the report, are from now on addressed in an annex to the annual State of the Energy Union report.

While the available historical data covers until 2018 and in some cases 2019, given the COVID-19 pandemic’s severe impact on energy prices and costs, where possible, the latest figures were included in the report to provide the most recent picture. Compared to the two previous editions of this report, the COVID-19 pandemic has in some cases limited reporting ability, in particular by industry. For some highly energy intensive sectors, this has somewhat reduced the scope of international comparisons and the comprehensiveness of the assessment of energy prices and costs’ importance.