Europe's energy bills unplugged: Who pays the most to use the grid?
Energy bills are a major part of living costs. Energy prices vary widely across Europe. Bills include not just energy costs, but also taxes and distribution fees.
The share of electricity and gas bills that goes to distribution, essentially what you pay to use the grid, also differs from country to country.
So, how much of your energy bill goes to distribution companies in Europe? And which countries pay the most for distribution? Also known as network charges, this portion of the bill mostly includes both transmission and distribution costs.
The Household Energy Price Index (HEPI), compiled by Energie-Control Austria, MEKH, and VaasaETT, provides a detailed breakdown of residential end-user electricity and gas prices. The breakdown includes four components: energy, distribution, energy taxes, and VAT.
As of April 2024, the share of distribution in household electricity prices ranged from 11% in Nicosia to 65% in Budapest, closely followed by Amsterdam (60%). However, in Amsterdam, the distribution share would drop to 39% if the tax refund were not considered.
The capital cities of Hungary and the Netherlands stand out as clear outliers, with more than half of the electricity bill going to distribution.
The EU-27 average was 28%. Other high-share cities include Luxembourg City (46%), Podgorica (43%), and Bucharest (42%).
Many Central and Eastern European cities such as Kyiv, Vilnius, Riga, Zagreb, Belgrade, and Warsaw have distribution shares well above the EU average. Western cities like Paris (35%) and Lisbon (34%) also fall into the higher group.
The Nordic capitals (Helsinki, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen) tend to have lower shares (between 17%–23%).
Southern Europe shows some of the lowest distribution shares, including Athens (15%) and Rome (15%).
Cities like Berlin (29%), Vienna (30%), Tallinn (29%), Dublin (30%), and Prague (31%) are close to the EU average, showing moderate distribution cost impact.
Among the capitals of Europe's top five economies, London and Madrid had the lowest distribution share at 18%.
On average across the EU capital cities, the distribution share is slightly lower in gas prices (23%) than in electricity prices (28%).
The distribution share in residential end-user gas prices ranged from 10% in Kyiv to 43% in Bern.
In addition to Bern, the distribution share exceeded one-third of gas bills in Sofia (37%) and Bratislava (34%). In Dublin, it came close to that level at 32%.
Among the EU capitals, Amsterdam had the lowest distribution share at 13%, followed by Zagreb and Tallinn, both at 15%.
The variation in gas distribution shares among Europe's top five economies is smaller compared to electricity. London and Madrid had the highest shares at 22%, slightly below the EU average, followed by Rome at 21%. In Paris and Berlin, the shares were even lower—17% and 16%, respectively.
Rafaila Grigoriou, HEPI project manager & head of VaasaETT's Greek office, and Ioannis Korras, senior energy market analyst at VaasaETT explained that network costs are determined based on local requirements and national strategies for the development and upgrading of distribution and transmission networks. A significant portion of national network investment costs is passed on to end-user bills through network charges.
'Disparities among markets are primarily driven by their investment plans and are related to electrification demand, level of RES penetration, distributed generation, the age of the network infrastructure etc.' Grigoriou and Korras told Euronews.
VaasaETT experts also noted that the comparison of network cost shares in total bills between countries may not always accurately reflect the true significance of network costs in some cases. This is especially true in cases where regulations or support schemes affect the energy component of the bill.
Cities like Budapest and Bucharest clearly illustrate this effect. In Budapest, the electricity distribution share is 65%, equal to 5.94 c€/kWh. In contrast, Bucharest has a lower distribution share of 42%, but the actual cost is higher at 6.75 c€/kWh. This is due to differences in end-user electricity prices: 9.1 c€/kWh in Budapest versus 16.1 c€/kWh in Bucharest.
The same pattern applies to gas distribution in these cities as well.
The breakdown of energy bills can vary over time or during extraordinary situations, depending on the country. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is a clear example of such a disruption, which led to sharp changes in energy prices.
'Since the beginning of the energy crisis, there has been a significant number of temporary support measures that involved the reduction or abolishment of network charges or taxes in European countries,' Rafaila Grigoriou told.
'Those have affected both electricity and gas bills and a small number of those are in fact still active in some markets. Slovenia is an example of this for residential electricity customers.' she added.
While this article does not aim to analyse or compare final consumer energy prices across Europe in depth, providing these figures still offers valuable context.
As of April 2025, household end-user electricity prices ranged from 9.1 € cents per kWh in Budapest to 40.4 c€/kWh in Berlin according to the HEPI. The EU-27 average was 24.7 c€/kWh.
Among EU capital cities, gas prices in the same period ranged from 2.5 c€/kWh in Budapest to 34.1 c€/kWh in Stockholm, with an EU average of 11.1 c€/kWh.
Euronews compared and analysed residential end-user electricity and gas prices across Europe as of January 2025, examining both nominal prices and those adjusted for purchasing power.
The article entitled 'Electricity and Gas Prices Across Europe' also explores the factors driving the differences in energy prices across European countries.
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