Gas consumption across the European Union plunged by almost 20% between August and January, reflecting a widespread resolve among households and companies to take matters into their own hands and cushion the impact from skyrocketing bills, Trend reports citing Euronews.
The figures, released on Tuesday by Eurostat, mean the EU has comfortably overshot its own target to reduce gas consumption by 15%, which was supposed to be met by the end of March.
The target was agreed in the summer as pre-emptive action against a worst-case scenario in which Russia would abruptly stop gas supplies to the bloc in retaliation for Western sanctions.
The Kremlin eventually shut down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline with Germany but kept supplying gas to Europe through other pipelines, albeit in smaller doses, and LNG vessels.
Back in July, ministers decided to make the 15% goal voluntary and only turn it compulsory in the event of severe shortages, a possibility that mild weather, diversification of suppliers and underground storage helped avoid.
Still, the latest figures demonstrate that the need to save money on gas bills was stronger than any European or national mandate.
The EU's gas consumption fell by 19.3% between August 2022 and January 2023 compared to the average consumption for the same months between 2017 and 2022, Eurostat said.
The largest savings were registered in Finland (–57.3%), Lithuania (–47.9%) and Sweden (–40.2%).
Reductions were also considerable in Estonia, Latvia, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Romania, Denmark, Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Germany, with all of them exceeding the bloc's 19.3% mark.
Spain (–13.7%) and Slovenia (–14.2%) are yet to reach the 15% voluntary target, although technically speaking, they still have until the end of March to do so.
Ireland, an island country that did not buy any gas from Russia, posted the most moderate rate of gas savings, with just –0.3% by the end of January.
Conversely, Malta and Slovakia were the two only member states where gas consumption actually went up.