The Pull
The “pull” is due to a prolonged decline in consumer energy revenue on both sides of the ocean. End-user electricity consumption dropped in 22 out of 28 Eastern European countries between 2005 and 2014, according to Eurostat. Also, in the U.S., the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that electricity sales growth rate since 2002 has lingered around 1% or less per year, and the demand has declined overall in five of those years. That’s a sharp drop from growth rates that were well above 2 % for much of the previous decades. The rise in demand for electricity has been consistently declining more than general economic growth in the last few years.