Governments across Europe are scrambling to cushion citizens from soaring energy prices and have so far allocated a total of about €280bn (£240bn) to helping reduce the impact of the crisis, according to the thinktank Bruegel.
Pressure is mounting for joint action beyond a voluntary 15% cut in consumption agreed in July, and the EU will hold an emergency summit on 9 September to discuss measures including a bloc-wide price cap.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said this week the bloc was working on “an emergency intervention and a structural reform of [Europe’s] electricity market”, whose limitations are being cruelly exposed.
Options include an emergency block-wide price cap, and – more fundamentally – a decoupling of electricity and gas prices, a move backed by several member states and adopted as an “Iberian exception” this summer by Spain and Portugal with the aim of slashing electricity bills.
Under the present EU-wide mechanism, electricity prices are pegged to the price of the most expensive fuel used in power generation, which is currently natural gas – whose price has surged since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sending electricity prices soaring too.
Encouragingly, the continent’s gas storage reservoirs, which will be critical to getting through the winter, have reached the commission’s 80% capacity target two months ahead of schedule, and Spain, Italy, Germany and France have exceeded it.
But the coming months nonetheless look likely to be tough for millions across the continent. Here is a look at the scale of the energy crisis in several European countries, and – with Britain’s government accused of inaction – what capitals are doing about it.
France has frozen gas prices at October 2021 levels and capped electricity price increases at 4% until at least the end of the year, and handed out €100 to low- and middle-income households to help pay energy bills.
The finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, has said any price increases next year would be similarly “contained”, with no catchup costs, while the government spokesperson Olivier Véran said France would “not allow what is happening in the UK to happen here”.
Without government energy intervention – known as le bouclier tarifaire, or the tariff shield, part of a €65bn package to tackle the cost of living crisis – French gas bills would have risen by 60% and electricity bills by 45%, Le Maire has said.
France, traditionally a net exporter of electricity, is currently a net importer because several of the nuclear reactors that generate about 70% of its electricity – making it far less reliant on Russian gas – are shut for maintenance and have corrosion problems.
The country has embarked on a “sobriety programme” aimed at cutting energy consumption by 10%, including setting temperatures in public buildings higher in summer and lower in winter. The private sector and households are expected to make similar efforts.
Prime minister Elisabeth Borne has warned companies face energy rationing if they do not reduce consumption, while President Emmanuel Macron has said the French will have to make sacrifices during a “difficult” winter as a new era of instability due to climate change and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine meant the end of abundant energy, water and new products.
Natural gas, mostly used to heat private homes and to power industry, makes up a quarter of Germany’s overall energy mix, and at the start of the war 55% it came from Russia. By this month, however, the figure had fallen to 9.5%.
Olaf Scholz’s government has embarked on an ambitious programme to wean itself off Russian gas completely, scrambling to build floating LNG import terminals and vowing to massively expand onshore windfarms.
Some coal plants that were due to be shuttered have been reactivated, though the government has yet to say what it will do about the last three remaining nuclear power plants, due to be shut down at the end of the year.
Several energy-saving measures have been enacted, including limiting temperatures in public buildings to 19C from September and turning off heating in common areas such as corridors, with the private sector encouraged to follow suit.
Most heating and electricity bills are up by about 10% year on year, but the real shock will come in 2023: Berlin’s tenants’ association expects landlords to demand additional retrospective energy payments equivalent to two months’ rent.
Facing “a tripling, at the very least,” of monthly consumer bills next year, the government is paying all people in regular employment a one-off rebate of €300 in September. Students and welfare recipients have already received double their usual lump-sum payment to assist with heating private homes.
Italy is one of Europe’s most vulnerable countries, with 40% of gas imports dependent on Russia. Without government intervention, up to 120,000 firms risk closure over the next nine months, industry associations have said.
Electricity bills have already risen sharply and the power regulator Arera has warned of a 100% year-on-year increase by 1 October. Restaurant owners have posted bills totalling thousands of euros on social media or displayed them in their windows.
As political parties clamour for rapid action, the government has said it is studying more options to help households and businesses. But the crisis is aggravated by political instability after Mario Draghi’s resignation as prime minister in July.
Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right League, who is tipped to be among the winners of the 25 September elections, has said that if prices do not fall, the next government “will have to ration electricity and gas, starting with businesses”.
Although Draghi signed a series of bilateral agreements with Algeria, Africa’s biggest gas exporter, to secure alternative supplies, Salvini said that without intervention there was “absolutely a concrete risk of having to decide who will heat their homes and plants and who will not; who will turn on the lights and who will not.”
The country is also working on an emergency energy-saving plan under which domestic radiators would be lowered by 2C in winter, cities would cut street lighting by 40%, public offices would close early and shops would shut by 7pm and restaurants 11pm.
Spain is not nearly as dependent on Russian gas as some EU states – Russia provided 10% of its gas imports this year – but the Socialist-led coalition government recently introduced a series of energy-saving measures targeting a 7-8% reduction in gas use.
Last week, parliament approved a decree limiting air conditioning and heating temperatures in public and large commercial buildings such as malls, cinemas, railway stations and airports. Shop window lights must be switched off after 10pm.
On Thursday, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said his government would cut VAT on gas from 21% to 5% from October until the end of the year to help Spanish households with their energy bills.
In June the EU approved an €8.4bn Spanish and Portuguese plan to reduce wholesale electricity prices in the Iberian market by capping the price of gas used to produce electricity. Operating as a direct grant to electricity producers, it should save households 15% to 20% on their energy bills, the government says.
Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, said Spain was far better prepared for winter than some countries, but people could do more. “Do I need to tell families to shower in cold water, like the German government has?” she told El Mundo.
“That wouldn’t even occur to me. But I can urge people to readopt habits such as turning off lights when they’re not needed, or not turning the heating up so high.”
Different countries face very different problems. Poland, a major European producer of low-grade coal, which it exports and uses to fire the power stations that generate about 70% of its electricity, imposed an embargo on Russian coal in April.
That mattered because the country also relies heavily on coal for domestic heating, which requires a higher grade, almost half of which – about 5m tonnes – Poland used to import mainly from Russia. With that source closed off, prices have trebled.
In June the government tried to guarantee supplies by ordering state-owned companies to buy an extra 4.5m tonnes for domestic consumption, lifted quality standards for home burning, and tried unsuccessfully to cap prices.
This month it announced a one-off payment of 3,000 złotys (about €630, or £540) for each coal-burning household, with smaller subsidies for different types of heating fuel such as wood and LPG, a move that has been criticised as environmentally harmful and not means-tested.
The Netherlands is the EU’s largest natural gas producer and western Europe’s biggest after Norway but it has imported up to 15% of its gas from Russia as it has wound down production from its Groningen gasfield because of earthquakes.
It is offering the lowest-earning households a one-off energy subsidy of €1,300,hiking the miniumum wage and lowering VAT on energy to 9%, but has said it will only dramatically increase output from the Groningen field if Russia shuts off all gas supplies to Europe.
The government is doubling LNG imports and said last month that the country had cut its gas consumption by about 33% in the first half of the year, partly due to warm weather, but it has said it remains exposed to any wider European gas crisis.
Even non-EU Norway, a huge natural gas producer that generates almost 90% of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, has seen domestic power prices soar owing to low water levels in its reservoirs and unusually high electricity exports.
The government is considering limiting exports and has capped electricity bills at 7 NKr (€0.7 or £0.61) per kWh, with the state covering 80% (rising to 90% in October) above that. Critics say many households will still struggle, and further measures are under discussion.
• This article was amended on 4 September 2022. An earlier version incorrectly stated that Norway had capped its electricity price at “€7 per kWh”. The correct figure is 7 NKr, or €0.7.
