Average energy costs in the UK are €2,960, €650 in France, €650 in Belgium, €620 in Spain, €558 in Germany, €558 in Denmark, €546 in Holland, €545 in Austria, €543 in Norway, €476 in Finland and €174 in Poland.
These figures show wholesale electricity costs per megawatt hour for a single hour (6pm to 7pm) on 12 December 2022, not the average cost of energy in each country.
Posts shared hundreds of times over the last week on Facebook claim to show the “average energy costs” of a number of European countries, including the UK.
But, as we wrote when we saw similar posts circulating in 2023 and 2024, these figures refer to the wholesale prices of electricity for a single hour in December 2022, rather than an average, and do not reflect the prices paid by consumers.
The image in the posts lists 11 countries in Europe alongside prices in Euros. The prices for countries in mainland Europe range from “€174” for Poland to “€650” for both France and Belgium, but the UK is listed with a much higher price at “€2,960”. The text above the list says: “Why is there such a vast difference in average energy costs?”
We’ve written before about misleading comparisons of energy prices we’ve seen on social media. Claims like these can spread fast and far, and are difficult to contain and correct.
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Figures similar to those seen in the posts appeared in a post shared on X (formerly Twitter) on 15 December 2022, which shows them on a map of Europe branded with “epexspot”. Epex Spot (also known as the European Power Exchange) is used by over 400 companies in more than 19 countries to buy and sell electricity to meet demand.
The UK figure of €2,960 listed on the posts broadly matches the £2,586 figure on the map converted into Euros based on exchange rates in February 2023 (around the same time the list first went viral). The list also includes figures for Spain and Austria not included in the Epex Spot data, the origins of which are unclear.
When we looked at this data in 2023 Epex Spot told us that these figures referred to the platform’s day-ahead prices per megawatt hour (MWh) of electricity for delivery between 6pm and 7pm on 12 December 2022.
Crucially, these prices were those paid by suppliers, not consumers, and are not “average energy costs”, but rather the prices during that one specific hour in December 2022. Data we saw from Epex Spot showed that over 12 December 2022, the figure for the UK was the peak figure for that day, and the average was £675 per MWh.
The Household Energy Price Index (HEPI) provides monthly comparisons of consumer electricity prices in 33 European capital cities. Its latest data, for December 2024, shows the average cost for London was 36.5 cents (€) per kilowatt hour (kWh). The capital cities of Germany (40.23c), Denmark (37.31c) and Belgium (36.91c) all had higher prices than London that month.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because these figures do not represent average energy costs, and instead refer to wholesale electricity prices during a specific hour in December 2022.
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