I think the reason is the same as for the lower then expected impact of the sanctions on Russia. People are quite resourceful when facing an acute crisis. When millions of people have an actual motivation to find better ways of doing things, they tend to find solutions they would have never considered under normal circumstances.
You might easily find that a "recession" is less damaging to people than a period of drastically cut energy consumption. People unable to heat themselves in winter undermines the idea of a growing economy - the metrics aren't supposed to be a shell game of excuses where some drops are papered over because it is politically inconvenient.
I mean, how are people supposed to be better off if we're seeing these types of sharp drops in energy use? It strains credulity that someone in the Netherlands can cut their gas use by 24% in a year and claim that their material living standard didn't decline. There'd have to be something mighty positive happening - what is it? They haven't had time to build up capital to keep themselves comfortable.
Stage-1) Politicians should be the first and their energy expenditures should be cut by law to half of the median with some painful consequences for breaking it.
Stage-2) After a couple of years same goes for top 1% and government offices.
Stage-3) After another couple of years do this for top 10%
Stage-4) The rest of us.
20 years later we had cars using up half the gasoline and with 2x the horsepower.
Humans need a solid kick in the behind sometimes.
The real question is whether there was a statistically significant difference compared to previous years ceteris paribus (same location, same time of year, etc.).
Also the influx of various refugees over the years should be taken into account.
Anecdotal evidence that there is homelessness does not automatically mean doom and gloom for a country.
I visited Frankfurt just 1 month ago and was shocked to see the situation being even worse.
I believe a lot of it is a post-effect of covid where some people fell through the craks and now are just lost to drugs or other addictions.