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New Energy World
New Energy World embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low carbon technologies.
Trends in the 2023 UK fuel retail market
24/4/2024
8 min read
The Energy Institute’s (EI) Knowledge, Insights and Research team has gathered a wealth of UK forecourt and electric vehicle charging point data as part of the latest Retailing Market Survey (RMS). Here, Claire Cortis AMEI, Digital Knowledge and Information Manager, discusses the emerging trends.
The uncertainty in 2022 caused by continuing COVID-related supply chain issues and the Ukraine war that affected the retail fuel industry continued to be felt in 2023. Whilst fuel prices fluctuated wildly, prompting closer scrutiny by the UK government’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), electric vehicles (EVs) continued to rise in popularity. Their market share continued to increase, so did the number of charging points across the UK. These trends are reflected in the latest EI’s Retail Marketing Survey.
Fuel prices and sales
The second highest fuel forecourt price spike in history occurred in 2023, beaten only by prices in the previous year. The average price of unleaded petrol was 148.27 pence per litre (p/l) and the average price of diesel was 159.45 p/l, making unleaded petrol on average 10.3% cheaper (16.94 p/l cheaper) and diesel on average 10.6% (18.93 p/l cheaper) than in 2022 (see Fig 1).
Fig 1: Average petrol prices in the UK, 2022–2023
Source: Experian Catalist