Did Low-Carbon Electricity Shield Countries from the Energy Price Shock?

Countries with higher shares of low-carbon electricity experienced smaller price increases after the 2022 energy crisis. We quantify the relationship using publicly available data.

When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent European natural gas prices soaring in 2022, wholesale electricity prices followed. But the shock did not hit every country equally. Countries that had invested heavily in low-carbon generation — nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, and bioenergy — saw smaller and shorter-lived price increases than those still reliant on fossil fuels.

This analysis uses publicly available data to quantify the relationship between a country’s pre-crisis low-carbon electricity share and the size of its price increase.

The price shock across Europe

The chart below shows monthly wholesale electricity prices for every European country in the Ember dataset. Use the dropdown to select specific countries, or view them all at once.

Select countries to highlight

Source: Ember European Wholesale Electricity Price Data (monthly).

Who got hit hardest?

To measure the lasting impact — rather than just the 2022 spike — we compare each country’s 2019 average price with its average over 2023–2025.

Difference between the average wholesale price in 2023–2025 and the 2019 baseline. Red = increase; blue = decrease.

The low-carbon advantage

Is there a systematic relationship between a country’s pre-crisis electricity mix and the size of its price shock? We measure each country’s low-carbon share in 2019 — the combined share of nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, and bioenergy — and plot it against the price change.

© Ralf Martin

For every additional percentage point of low-carbon electricity in 2019, the post-crisis price increase was -0.033 cents/kWh smaller on average.

Regression results

Table 1: OLS: price change ~ low-carbon share. N = 29, R² = 0.207, Adj. R² = 0.177

Term	Estimate	Std. Error	t	p-value	CI low (2.5%)	CI high (97.5%)
(Intercept)	6.4001	0.7976	8.0243	0.0000	4.7636	8.0367
renewx	-0.0329	0.0124	-2.6533	0.0132	-0.0583	-0.0075

What if countries hadn’t expanded low-carbon power?

Between 2010 and 2019 many European countries significantly increased their low-carbon electricity share. Using the regression slope, we ask: how much higher would the post-crisis price increase have been if each country had stayed at its 2010 low-carbon share?

The x-axis shows how much the low-carbon share grew between 2010 and 2019; the y-axis shows the implied reduction in the post-crisis price increase.

Blue = actual price change. Red = counterfactual if the country had stayed at its 2010 low-carbon share.

Total annual savings from low-carbon expansion

How much money did countries save by expanding their low-carbon electricity share between 2010 and 2019? We take the implied per-kWh price saving from the regression (slope × gain in low-carbon share) and multiply it by actual electricity demand in each of 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Each bar shows the estimated annual saving from expanding low-carbon generation between 2010 and 2019, multiplied by actual demand in 2023–2025.

Data & methodology

Item	Detail
Prices	Ember European Wholesale Electricity Price Data (monthly)
Generation mix	Our World in Data / Ember + Energy Institute
Price unit	Euro-cents per kWh
Base year	2019 (pre-pandemic, pre-crisis)
Comparison	Average of 2023–2025
Low-carbon share	Nuclear + hydro + wind + solar + geothermal + bioenergy
Method	OLS regression of price change on 2019 low-carbon share