Soaring energy prices could mean an even colder and darker winter across Europe, with governments racing to find new ways to protect households facing huge utility bills.
Wholesale gas prices are hovering around €200 per megawatt hour — eight times higher than the average level of recent years, wholesale electricity prices have risen sharply in response to generation difficulties in many countries, and the gloom is mounting.
In the UK, where households bills are expected to rise to £4,400 a year in early 2023, around four times the level of the period between 2018 and 2021, the consumer rights campaigner Martin Lewis has described the situation as “a national crisis on the scale that we saw in the pandemic”.