According to an evaluation by the comparison portal Check24, households in Germany reduced their electricity and gas consumption significantly in the past year. According to this, people used around 21 percent less gas and around 12 percent less electricity in 2022 than in 2021. This means that gas consumption has fallen to around 15,400 kilowatt hours a year and electricity consumption to around 2800 kilowatt hours a year.
Many people feared high energy bills as a result of the Ukraine war last year and therefore reduced their consumption early on, said Steffen Suttner, Energy Manager at Check24 on Tuesday. The editorial network Germany (RND) had previously reported on the survey.
decline in all federal states
The data are not representative. They are based on an evaluation of all electricity and gas contracts concluded via Check24 in 2022 and the consumption values specified by the customers. Check24 did not name the exact number of contracts evaluated, but it was in the six-digit range for both electricity and gas, said a spokeswoman for the comparison portal.
The decline in gas and electricity consumption, which the comparison portal Verivox can read from its data, is somewhat less pronounced, but the trend is also clear. According to this, 12 percent less gas was used on average nationwide in 2022 compared to the previous year, so consumption was only around 18,000 kilowatt hours. According to Verivox, power consumption fell by 8 percent to around 2900 kilowatt hours.
According to the Check24 data, the consumption of gas and electricity has fallen in all federal states, albeit to different extents. There are no figures from the evaluated contracts for the individual federal states.
Households in Hamburg have saved the most gas. Consumption there has fallen by almost 30 percent. Berliners would have used almost 25 percent less gas, people in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt only 14 percent.
When it came to saving electricity, households in Brandenburg, Bavaria and Bremen were way ahead with minus 13 percent each. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Hamburg, on the other hand, electricity consumption fell by almost 8 percent compared to the previous year.
Feared bottlenecks in winter did not materialize
According to Check24, on average slightly more electricity was consumed in West German households than in East German ones. One reason: “In the western federal states, the number of people per household is greater than in the east,” says the statement. Saarland was the leader with more than 2900 kilowatt hours of electricity consumption per year, while Berlin had the lowest consumption with almost 2400 kilowatt hours.
In the past year, the Federal Network Agency repeatedly appealed to the population to save as much energy as possible. “If we don’t manage to achieve at least 20 percent savings in private households, then we won’t be able to get by in an average winter without cuts in industry,” said Network Agency President Klaus Müller in October 2022. Thanks to savings efforts, especially in industry, and a mild winter, the feared energy bottlenecks did not occur.
