Study on energy prices, costs and subsidies and their impact on industry and households

As part of the EC’s commitment to present an analysis on energy prices and costs every two years, this study, carried out in collaboration with Trinomics, Enerdata and LBST, directly fed into the third energy prices and costs report in 2018, and updated and extended the analysis carried out in the previous two reports in 2014 and 2016. Specifically, the project aimed to:  

• Analyse the development of wholesale and retail electricity, natural gas and petroleum product prices across the EU and major trading partners;  

• Analyse the effect of energy prices and costs on production costs and competitiveness of industries in the EU and major trading partners;  
• Analyse price regulation of electricity and gas in the EU, and how this impacts on energy prices and quality of service;  and
• Analyse subsidies on energy products (especially fossil fuels) used in the energy, transport and agricultural sectors in the EU and major EU trading partners and evaluate the effect of these subsidies on energy prices and costs.  

Our role within the project was, firstly, to carry out an assessment of the impact of energy costs on industries’ competitiveness, through modelling and a decomposition analysis of industry production costs.

Secondly, we provided an assessment of the impact of energy subsidies on energy costs for energy-intensive industries, other industries, and households.