Europe's industrial power prices stay clustered as US demand pushes PJM costs up 75%

The gap between the cheapest and the most expensive industrial power markets in Europe was seven euro cents per kilowatt-hour in 2023. That is the headline finding from a WorldMetrics compilation of European energy price statistics, first published on 12 February 2026 and updated on 17 July 2026. The same dataset puts the 2021-2023 EU average industrial electricity price at €0.16 per kWh.

Germany sat at €0.18 per kWh. France at €0.15. Spain at €0.16. Italy at €0.17. The Netherlands at €0.19, the highest of the large economies in the set. Poland, at €0.14 per kWh for industrial users, was the cheapest. WorldMetrics notes that Polish households paid €0.13 and commercial users €0.15. That inverts the usual pattern, in which households pay more per unit than business. Year-on-year increases were sharper than the absolute levels suggest. Germany's industrial power price rose 22% between 2022 and 2023, the dataset says. France was up 18%, Spain 25%, Italy 20% and Poland 28%. WorldMetrics tags its figures as verified, directional or single-source depending on the underlying data. The page states that it excludes unverifiable statistics.

Costs are still elevated, and the European Commission says so

The European Commission's sixth report on energy prices and costs, published in February 2025, frames the same period differently. It describes a severe crisis in European and global energy markets since 2020, with wholesale gas and electricity prices reaching historic levels before starting to fall in 2023. Gas prices stayed very high until the end of 2022, then gradually decreased as regulatory action, reduced demand and better market fundamentals took hold. The Commission is blunt about the consequence. Industrial gas and electricity prices, while lower than at the peak of the crisis, remain two to four times higher than in the EU's main trading partners. The report warns this threatens the long-term competitiveness of European industry, and singles out energy-intensive sectors as the most exposed. It also notes the EU's energy import bill fell to €427 billion in 2024 from a peak of €604 billion in 2022, but still calls that a significant drain.

The report warns about the costs for the EU from its high reliance on fossil fuel imports, noting that although the EU's energy import bill receded to €427 billion in 2024 (after reaching the peak of €604 billion in 2022), it is still a significant drain on the European economy.

One detail in the Commission's account matters for anyone reading the 2023 price tables. Retail prices followed wholesale prices up, but not uniformly and not at the same speed. The report attributes the divergence to national crisis mitigation measures, differences in contract-length structures, and retailers' varying gas procurement strategies, including long-term contracts and hedging. Two industrial buyers in neighbouring countries can face very different bills for reasons that have little to do with generation costs.

Volatility, not just level

WorldMetrics also tracks how much prices moved. The standard deviation of EU industrial electricity prices over 2021-2023 was 0.08, with Germany at 0.09 and France at 0.07. Natural gas was more restless: the EU industrial gas price volatility figure was 0.12, the Netherlands 0.10, France 0.10. Spain's industrial electricity price volatility for 2020-2023 was 0.08, Sweden's 0.07, the UK's industrial heating oil figure 0.11.

On the cost index compiled on a 2020=100 basis, the 2023 EU reading stood at 135, with Poland at 150 and France the lowest at 130. Germany's index rose 25% year on year, France 20%, and the EU average 22%. The volatility of that index over 2021-2023 was far lower than for raw power prices: 0.04 for the EU, 0.05 for Germany, 0.06 for Poland.

Spot markets on 27 September 2026, as listed by Energy Prices.eu, show Italy's Sicily at an average of €0.199 per kWh, the most expensive area in the map, and Finland at €0.022 per kWh, the cheapest. Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Romania, Germany, Luxembourg, Hungary, Portugal and Spain all sat between roughly €0.114 and €0.132 per kWh for the day. The site states that its prices are day-ahead spot prices without local VAT or other additions.

Meanwhile, in the largest US market

The Register reported on 15 May 2026 that wholesale power costs in the PJM Interconnection, which serves all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, rose from $77.78 per MWh in the first quarter of 2025 to $136.53 per MWh in the same period of 2026, a 75.5% increase. Monitoring Analytics, PJM's official market monitor, identified datacenter load growth as the main driver.

The monitor's report said that but for datacenter growth, actual and forecast, the capacity market would not have seen the same tight supply and demand conditions. It added that the price impacts on customers are very large and not reversible, and will be even larger in the near term unless the issues associated with datacenter load are addressed in a timely manner. Monitoring Analytics recommended that datacenters be required to bring their own generation. PJM told The Register it is working with states and member companies on consumer impacts, including extending market caps and reforming wholesale market rules.

The contrast is uncomfortable for European industry. European wholesale prices have stabilised since the 2021-2023 crisis, according to the Commission, but at levels above historical averages, and the pass-through to retail bills is still working its way through. American industrial power costs, distorted by datacenter demand, are moving in the other direction. Neither trajectory looks cheap.