Romania Uses Less Energy per Person Than Any Other EU Country

Energy as it reaches the people using it

Final energy consumption counts the energy delivered to the people and firms that use it — industry, transport, households, services and agriculture — and stops there. It leaves out what the energy industries burn to do their own work, the heat lost in generating electricity, and what is lost again in moving energy to where it is wanted. It also leaves out energy carriers put to a use that is not energy, such as gas turned into chemicals.

For the EU in 2024 it was 2.0 tonnes of oil equivalent per inhabitant.

Luxembourg

Luxembourg records 5.21, more than two and a half times the EU average and the highest in the Union by a wide margin.

Part of that is genuine: Luxembourg is wealthy and cold in winter. Most of it is not about people living in Luxembourg at all.

Fuel sold in Luxembourg is consumed by drivers who live elsewhere. Excise duty is lower than in the neighbouring countries, so road fuel is bought there and burnt in Belgium, France and Germany. It is counted against an average population of 677,012 in 2024, taken from Eurostat's demographic balance and declared below, because that population is what this indicator divides by.

The country also hosts a large cross-border commuting workforce, whose energy use at work is Luxembourg's and whose residence is not. How large is not quantified here: no series this study declares measures cross-border commuting, and a figure for it would need an extraction of its own.

Per-capita energy figures for a small country with an open border and cheaper fuel do not measure what they appear to measure.

Finland and Sweden

Finland records 3.98 and Sweden 2.87.

These are the figures that do reflect real conditions. Both have long cold winters, energy-intensive forest and metal industries, low population density and long distances. The regional density extraction declared below puts Övre Norrland in northern Sweden at 3.5 inhabitants per square kilometre, Mellersta Norrland at 5.3 and Pohjois- ja Itä-Suomi, in northern and eastern Finland, at 6.2.

Finland is also the Member State with the lowest share of people unable to keep their home adequately warm, at 2.6% in 2025. High energy consumption and low energy poverty sit together here: Finland is near the top of this ranking and at the bottom of that one. Final energy counts industry and transport as well as homes, so the two figures are not two readings of one quantity.

The low end

Romania records 1.23 and Malta 1.30. Bulgaria and Portugal are level at 1.54, so four Member States share the three lowest places.

Mild winters explain part of it. Income explains part of it, but less than this end of the ranking suggests. Real GDP per head for the same year was extracted for this comparison and is declared below. Across the Union as a whole the two orders match closely: on a rank correlation, where one means they are identical and zero that they are unrelated, they score 0.72. Among the fourteen Member States below the EU average they score 0.22.

Romania and Bulgaria are the Union's two poorest Member States on that measure, and both sit near the bottom here. Malta is the case that does not follow: the second-lowest energy consumer in the Union is eleventh of the twenty-seven on GDP per head.

Malta and Portugal are the Mediterranean cases, where mild winters lower the heating a home needs.

Reading it as a sustainability measure

Low energy consumption per head is not automatically a good outcome, and this is where the indicator needs care.

Romania consumes little energy and records the Union's second-highest rate of material and social deprivation, 26.8% in 2025 against the EU's 12.0%. Portugal consumes little and has mild winters — and yet 15.6% of people there could not keep their home adequately warm that year, against 8.8% across the Union, the fifth-highest share of the twenty-seven. The two hardship series, both declared below, do not rank the same countries: Portugal is eleventh on the first and fifth on the second. Low consumption at this end of the ranking is not one thing: it can be a mild climate, a household that cannot afford more, or both at once.

Dividing by population is what makes countries of different sizes comparable, and it is also what makes the result turn on industrial structure and climate. The indicator measures neither efficiency nor sufficiency directly, and a fall in it can mean a more efficient economy or a smaller one.