For the glassmakers at iconic French tableware brand Duralex, the mornings have become a horror show. Daily updates from energy traders drop into their email inboxes, showing the asphyxiating upward climb of prices for the natural gas and electricity that power their energy-devouring business.
Before Europe's energy crisis — which took off after the COVID-19 pandemic and became a full-blown economic threat with Russia's war in Ukraine — the price charts were reassuringly stable. They have since become a terrifying succession of peaks and troughs, with Russia choking off cheap natural gas deliveries in a battle of wills with European leaders over their support for Ukraine.
