Europe’s energy woes keep getting worse, with winter coming and Russia cutting off natural gas exports.
European Union leaders are trying to steer the continent away from a financial meltdown, proposing emergency interventions including skimming from energy companies’ profits, “incentivizing” power saving to price caps on all gas—and not just Russia’s. Still, a number of green hydrogen projects, a potential substitute for natural gas, are on hold. In the UK, Prime Minister Liz Truss announced a cap on household energy bills and a fund to help power companies access extra liquidity. China, for its part, may add new coal-fired power plants after a spate of power crunches.
In the US, California is barely avoiding rolling power outages, underscoring how grids have become vulnerable in extreme weather as they transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
