I mean, basically every electrical device is more efficient now. Heat pumps use less energy to heat than electric coils, modern LED light bulbs use less than 20% of their incandescent counterparts, and fridges, dishwashers, and clothes washers are significantly more efficient. New homes are also better insulated, leading to less energy use.
There are more reasons for declining energy use than jumping to your conclusion of a failure to thrive.
Heatpumps don’t replace electric coils, they replace oil and gas heaters. Likewise electric cars and trains.
No doubt everything got more efficient. But stagnating or declining energy use, while cheap regenerative energy generation increased slowly but steadily, means there’s missed potential.
Off the top of my head I cannot come up with any energy hungry industry which increased production in Germany in recent years, while I could name a couple which moved abroad.
Everything is significantly more efficient these days. You can run 10-100 modern led lights on the electricity used by 1 conventional bulb, and heat pumps can be upwards of 400% efficient. All of those efficiencies really ad up.
but heat pumps aren’t replacingresistive heating. The vast majority of german houses are heated by oil or gas furnaces. I have lived here for 30+ years and have only ever been in 2 Houses heated by resistive heat. I just looked it up and the percentage was just 5.9% in 1998 and fell to 2.5% in 2025, while the percentage for heat pumps grew from 0.2% to 4.5% in that time. Last year 67.9% of new flats were equipped eith heat pumps. That combined with the imcrease in electric vehicle use should cause an increase in electricity used, and it’s weird that it doesn’t.
Guess cars are just a tiny puzzle piece. And there’s other factors. We’re insulating houses now. Industry and manufacturing got way more efficient. I believe they sometimes can make the same amount of profit with 40-60% less energy now, compared to 15years ago. Every shopping mall got upgrades, fridges in the supermarket have been replaced. All the lightbulbs. They tore down the telephone exchanges here which had been entire buildings with power-hungry tech and now it’s a few servers in the back of one room.
And I mean in the old days we also had our natural gas heating use two or three kilowatts of electricity each day because the water needs to circulate. And the shower and warm water might have been a resistive waterboiler and add some more kWh each day. Which is in fact now being replaced by heatpumps and more nuanced control.
A decent amount of people and farmers also put solar on their roofs to save on electricity and I’m not sure if that’s part of those numbers.
Seems it’s just enough savings to also afford additional EVs and heatpumps, and it’s still less total electricity.
I wonder how much of that is due to moving manufacturing abroad… though there were also serious efforts to make electricity use more efficient. Plus Germany started to seriously get into EVs in the 2020s.
I think it’s that, we have less heavy industry, less manufacturing, but also population is fairly constant, we’ve been about 80mio people in 1990 and we’re still about the same (83.5mio). We use more electronics. But electronics also made everything 50x more efficient…
It’s a plus for the question of whether Germany’s electricity use has become more efficient. Electrification has been a major trend for decades, yet German energy production (which in Germany generally mirrors domestic demand) has been falling since 2016. If it was just because of manufacturing moving abroad, it should have been falling all the way from 1990.
I’m surprised that electricity use is still at 1990 levels.
The graph doesn’t show electricity use, it shows electricity generation. Electricity generated elsewhere doesn’t show up in the graph.
Edit: BUT apparently Germany does indeed use less electricity than in the 90s. source. Not exactly the sign of a thriving nation.
I mean, basically every electrical device is more efficient now. Heat pumps use less energy to heat than electric coils, modern LED light bulbs use less than 20% of their incandescent counterparts, and fridges, dishwashers, and clothes washers are significantly more efficient. New homes are also better insulated, leading to less energy use.
There are more reasons for declining energy use than jumping to your conclusion of a failure to thrive.
Heatpumps don’t replace electric coils, they replace oil and gas heaters. Likewise electric cars and trains.
No doubt everything got more efficient. But stagnating or declining energy use, while cheap regenerative energy generation increased slowly but steadily, means there’s missed potential.
Off the top of my head I cannot come up with any energy hungry industry which increased production in Germany in recent years, while I could name a couple which moved abroad.
Just learning about Javon’s paradox?
Everything is significantly more efficient these days. You can run 10-100 modern led lights on the electricity used by 1 conventional bulb, and heat pumps can be upwards of 400% efficient. All of those efficiencies really ad up.
but heat pumps aren’t replacingresistive heating. The vast majority of german houses are heated by oil or gas furnaces. I have lived here for 30+ years and have only ever been in 2 Houses heated by resistive heat. I just looked it up and the percentage was just 5.9% in 1998 and fell to 2.5% in 2025, while the percentage for heat pumps grew from 0.2% to 4.5% in that time. Last year 67.9% of new flats were equipped eith heat pumps. That combined with the imcrease in electric vehicle use should cause an increase in electricity used, and it’s weird that it doesn’t.
Guess cars are just a tiny puzzle piece. And there’s other factors. We’re insulating houses now. Industry and manufacturing got way more efficient. I believe they sometimes can make the same amount of profit with 40-60% less energy now, compared to 15years ago. Every shopping mall got upgrades, fridges in the supermarket have been replaced. All the lightbulbs. They tore down the telephone exchanges here which had been entire buildings with power-hungry tech and now it’s a few servers in the back of one room.
And I mean in the old days we also had our natural gas heating use two or three kilowatts of electricity each day because the water needs to circulate. And the shower and warm water might have been a resistive waterboiler and add some more kWh each day. Which is in fact now being replaced by heatpumps and more nuanced control.
A decent amount of people and farmers also put solar on their roofs to save on electricity and I’m not sure if that’s part of those numbers.
Seems it’s just enough savings to also afford additional EVs and heatpumps, and it’s still less total electricity.
I wonder how much of that is due to moving manufacturing abroad… though there were also serious efforts to make electricity use more efficient. Plus Germany started to seriously get into EVs in the 2020s.
I think it’s that, we have less heavy industry, less manufacturing, but also population is fairly constant, we’ve been about 80mio people in 1990 and we’re still about the same (83.5mio). We use more electronics. But electronics also made everything 50x more efficient…
that isn’t really a plus in the context of a question: “how is it possible that the electricity consumption does not grow significantly?”
It’s a plus for the question of whether Germany’s electricity use has become more efficient. Electrification has been a major trend for decades, yet German energy production (which in Germany generally mirrors domestic demand) has been falling since 2016. If it was just because of manufacturing moving abroad, it should have been falling all the way from 1990.