In 2024, EU households used 9.54 million terajoules of energy, a slight decline (-0.2%) from 9.57 million terajoules in 2023. Energy use in households has been decreasing for 3 consecutive years, after the all-time peak of 10.98 million terajoules in 2021.
Households, or the residential sector, represented 26.0% of final energy consumption in the EU in 2024. Most of the EU’s final energy consumption in households was fuelled by natural gas (29.4%), electricity (26.9%) and renewables and biofuels (22.8%).
EU households used most of the energy for space heating (61.5%) and water heating (15.6%). The remaining energy was used for lighting and electrical appliances (14.8%), cooking (6.4%), other uses (0.9%) and space cooling (0.8%).
Source dataset: nrg_d_hhq
Compared with 2023, the energy used for space heating decreased by 1.2% and for cooking by 0.9%. In contrast, space cooling and lightning and electrical appliances used more energy than in 2023, with 15.3% and 2.6% increases, respectively.
For more information
- Statistics Explained article on energy consumption in households
- Thematic section on energy
- Database on energy
- Energy in Europe – 2026 edition
- Interactive energy visualisations
Methodological notes
- Electricity produced from renewable sources (e.g. hydro, wind, solar photovoltaic) is included under electricity and not shown as renewables. In this context, renewables include only those sources that are directly consumed by households, such as solid biofuels (e.g., firewood, wood pellets), biogas, solar thermal energy from active systems and ambient heat captured by heat pumps.
- The category ‘other end uses’ refers to all other end uses not included in the presented categories. This category covers any other energy consumption in households such as use of energy for the outdoors and any other activities not included in five major energy end-uses mentioned above (e.g. lawn mowers, swimming pool heating, outdoor heaters, outdoor barbeques, saunas).
- This article is based on disaggregated final energy consumption in households – quantities. The shares of energy products were calculated using simplified energy balances.
