Energy data collection across Europe: a region-by-region reality check

Collecting energy data across a European real estate portfolio is not one process repeated four times. It is four fundamentally different processes, shaped by infrastructure, regulation and digitalisation that vary enormously across the continent.

The Nordics: where it already works

The Nordic countries have some of the highest smart meter penetration rates in the world. According to FfE, the German energy research institute, Sweden and Denmark had already reached 100% household coverage by 2021, with Finland and Norway both above 98%. The Baltic states tell a more mixed story: Estonia matches the Nordic frontrunners at over 98%, while Latvia and Lithuania have crossed the 80% threshold but still have ground to cover.

Denmark is the clearest example of what full coverage means in practice. "In Denmark, there is one platform where all electricity data for commercial properties is available," says Hello Energy Managing Director, Kees van Alphen. "We need an identification code and a password, and ten seconds later we have the data."

That level of access creates an unusual dynamic. The infrastructure that makes data collection straightforward also means the market is already largely served. Where access is this easy, the value a specialist partner can add is smaller, simply because there is less friction left to remove.

Western Europe: high penetration, high complexity

Western European countries generally show strong smart meter adoption. According to ACER and CEER, the EU's energy regulators, France, the Netherlands and Malta have all crossed the 80% penetration threshold, and Spain has reached full coverage. Austria is progressing steadily, with penetration above 60%. Belgium, by contrast, has barely started its rollout. On paper, this looks like one of the more mature regions for energy data collection. In practice, penetration figures only tell part of the story.

Germany illustrates why. Despite being one of Europe's largest economies, its smart meter rollout remains among the slowest in the EU, with penetration still in the low single digits according to FfE. "Germany has 900 network operators, all working with a complicated software application they each developed themselves," says Van Alphen. "You submit a request through their system, you get a confirmation that it arrived, you submit an offer, you get a confirmation that the offer arrived, you approve the offer, you get another confirmation, and then finally the data comes in. And then it turns out the data is in the wrong format. The largest network operator, covering Berlin, delivers data in a format that is simply incorrect."

The irony is not lost on anyone who has worked with German infrastructure. "You would not expect this from Germany," says Van Alphen. "But digitalisation here genuinely lags behind. You see it everywhere, even in something as basic as an invoice still showing a fax number."

What makes this region commercially significant is not the infrastructure itself, but the pressure building on top of it. Clients with large German portfolios are pushing hard for better data, because unreliable billing data is costing them real money. "They are pushing us enormously," says Van Alphen. "When is your solution coming? We understand why, it is a fair question. But the reality on the ground is more stubborn than that."

Southern Europe: the infrastructure exists, the access does not

Southern European countries present a different pattern, and a wide spread within the region. According to FfE, Spain and Italy both have smart meter penetration above 98%. Portugal has taken longer, but its network operator EDP Distribuição expects to reach full coverage by 2025. Greece sits at the other end of the spectrum, with one of the lowest penetration rates in the EU, alongside Croatia and Cyprus, which have decided against a full rollout altogether.

For the countries where the hardware is in place, the infrastructure is rarely the bottleneck. Getting to the data is a separate problem entirely.

"We have had projects where we spent three years trying to get access to a central platform in Spain," says Van Alphen. "Eventually, completely frustrated, we found a local party who could extract the data from that platform for us, and we connect with them instead. It costs extra, but it works as an intermediate step."

Italy adds a different layer of opportunity. The market is shifting as family-owned property businesses sell to larger institutional funds, and those funds bring data requirements that the previous owners never had to think about. The infrastructure exists. The demand for what to do with it is only just emerging.

Eastern Europe: physical access before digital access

Eastern Europe is where the centre of gravity for smart meter growth is heading, and where it has the furthest to travel. According to Eurelectric, the European electricity industry association, penetration rates across the region remain in the single digits to low twenties: 7% in Hungary, 12% in Lithuania, 16% in Romania, and 22% in Poland, against an EU average of 56%. Berg Insight projects that Central and Eastern Europe will account for 52% of annual European smart meter shipments by 2029, up from 28% in 2023. That growth is still largely ahead of the region, not behind it.

For now, the challenge in Eastern Europe is rarely about software or APIs. It is about physical access. "In Poland, we have sometimes spent a year and a half going back and forth: calling, emailing, getting authorisations translated, dealing with one issue after another," says Van Alphen. "Someone needs to be physically present, because sometimes a meter is in a locked cabinet and you need to connect a cable to it. After all that back and forth, you finally find someone with the key, and then the appointment gets cancelled."

The question in Eastern Europe is rarely which digital connection to use. It is who can get there in person, and how many attempts it takes before everything lines up.

Four regions, four different starting points

A pan-European approach to energy data collection cannot mean the same approach repeated four times. In the Nordics, the work is largely about connecting to infrastructure that already exists. In Western Europe, it is about navigating bureaucratic complexity layered on top of reasonable infrastructure. In Southern Europe, it is about finding routes to data that the infrastructure technically supports but does not easily expose. In Eastern Europe, it is about physical presence and patience, with digital solutions still some years away from being the default.

Understanding which of these realities applies to which part of a portfolio is the first step towards setting realistic expectations, for timelines, for costs, and for what "complete" data collection actually looks like across a continent that does not move at one speed.

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This article is part of a series in which Kees van Alphen and Benno Schwartz share what ten years of European energy data collection has taught them.

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