In recent years, energy prices have become a central variable for industry, thermal networks and, more broadly, for any heat decarbonisation strategy. In this context, a simple but very useful indicator for interpreting market trends is the electricity to gas price ratio, meaning the relationship between electricity and natural gas prices expressed in the same energy unit.
This ratio does not replace a full techno economic assessment, but it does help answer a very practical question: in which contexts can heat electrification, for example through heat pumps, be more attractive than gas based solutions.
What the electricity to gas ratio means
In simple terms, the ratio is defined as:
ratio = electricity price / gas price
If the ratio increases, electricity is relatively more expensive than gas. If it decreases, electricity becomes relatively more competitive.
The key point is that this indicator should be read alongside technology performance. For a heat pump (HP), the cost of useful heat depends on the electricity price, but also on its COP. Therefore, the higher the electricity to gas ratio, the higher the performance required from an electric technology to compete economically with a conventional solution.
Even so, it is best seen as a first contextual signal rather than a final decision: the ratio does not account for investment, operation and maintenance, integration constraints, waste heat availability or regulatory frameworks. That is why it works best when combined with technical results and more detailed analyses, helping to steer innovation, exploitation and transfer strategies without losing sight of market reality.
How the data were collected
For this analysis, electricity and gas price data were collected for different European countries, using Eurostat1 mainly as the reference source for the historical series and for 2025. Based on these inputs, both prices were harmonised into the same energy unit to calculate the ratio consistently.
In this type of exercise, it is important to be clear that the outcome depends on several assumptions: customer category, treatment of taxes, consumption band, and the availability of national data. In some cases, particularly for countries outside Eurostat’s1 standard coverage, it may be necessary to use complementary national sources.
A first look, the 2025 European map
A very intuitive way to represent the ratio is through a European map. Figure 1 shows the distribution of the electricity to gas ratio for 2025.
The first takeaway is clear: Europe does not behave uniformly. Some countries show relatively low ratios, especially in the Nordic region, while others show significantly higher ratios, such as the United Kingdom and some countries in southern and eastern Europe.
The European Union average in 2025 is around 2.96, which already provides a useful reference for interpreting each country’s relative position. Countries such as Sweden or Finland show clearly lower values, suggesting a more favourable environment for electrification. By contrast, high values such as those observed in the United Kingdom, Italy or Greece indicate that, in those contexts, the economic competitiveness of electric solutions depends even more on achieving high performance.
A table to see the evolution in more detail
While Figure 1 provides a global snapshot, the time evolution tells another part of the story. For this reason, Table 1 includes five country cases with very different profiles, plus the European Union average; it covers 2007, 2015, 2025 and a simple extension of the trend to 2035.
In the table, the green shading marks cases where, assuming an average HP COP of 3 and a gas boiler efficiency of 0.9, the price context is more favourable for an HP than for a gas boiler, meaning the electricity to gas ratio is less than or equal to 3/0.9, approximately 3.33, without considering investment or operation.
What trends emerge from the results
Several interesting observations can be drawn from the historical series. First, the ratio has not been stable over time. The evolution between 2007 and 2025 shows significant volatility, confirming that market context can change substantially and directly affect the economic viability of electrified technologies.
Second, the 2025 map confirms strong regional differentiation. Northern Europe generally shows lower ratios, while other countries exhibit more strained relationships between electricity and gas prices. This means the same technological solution does not start from the same economic baseline across countries.
Third, cross country comparison makes it clear that the ratio can be used as a quick reading tool to identify where certain solutions, such as industrial heat pumps, could find a more favourable market entry point.
Finally, the 2035 value should not be interpreted as a prediction. It is a simple extension of the trend observed in the historical series, included only to facilitate reading and to open a discussion on possible trajectories. It can still be useful to explore how market conditions might evolve and what that could imply for the future exploitation of clean heat technologies.
Link to PUSH2HEAT, why this matters for the project
Within PUSH2HEAT, CARTIF is working on the analysis and preparation of exploitation routes and adoption pathways for heat decarbonisation solutions, with a clear focus on industrial contexts and on bringing technologies to market with realistic criteria.
One of the project’s goals is that solutions do not remain as “something that works”, but that they make sense in real world scenarios, with market signals, operational constraints and replicability needs. In that framework, the electricity to gas ratio is a simple but very practical piece to contextualise opportunities by region, and to support exploitation messages with a quantitative basis that is easy to communicate.
1 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
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