Energy costs for British industry as a whole surged by £29bn during crisis, with price of gas ‘key driver’.

The UK has been the worst hit by the gas crisis of all countries in Western Europe, and UK industry has paid a heavy price. The cost to the UK’s industrial sector has been an extra £29bn in energy bills the over the first four years of the gas crisis (2021–2024) compared to the four years (2016–2019) before the pandemic according to ECIU in its Industrial Energy Costs in the Gas Crisis analysis.

In particular, the UK’s steel sector had paid almost £1.8bn in extra energy costs in the gas crisis by the end of 2024, 80 per cent higher than in the four years before the pandemic, even as the sector’s output fell by around 40 per cent over that same period. These extra costs were split roughly evenly between direct impacts on gas bills, indirect impacts on electricity bills via gas power plants, and other fuels that have become more expensive as some other users have switched away from gas.

---