Why Europe’s energy market needs reform, now

Ursula von der Leyen has rightly suggested extending the “Iberian exception” to the rest of the European Union in response to demands by countries such as Germany that are heavily dependent on Russian gas, is a radically urgent issue like few others. Even before Russia’s unwarranted invasion of Ukraine, I spoke here about how counterproductive the EU’s energy auction system is.

Beyond the temporary and short-term solution of decoupling gas prices in response to the Kremlin’s blackmail, we need in-depth reform, a series of changes that electricity producers, distributors and consumers need to understand are the only rational response to a climate emergency that threatens to plunge not only Europe, but the whole world into unprecedented disaster.

Regular readers will know that I’ve written extensively about the climate emergency; so if you are a denialist or revisionist on this subject, you might as well stop reading now.

Those of us who understand what fossil fuels are doing to our planet, might want to consider the following question: how would you feel if your local supermarket charged you top prices for everything you bought? Obviously, you’d choose the most expensive products. But what about producers and distributors? They would be desperate to stock up on precisely those very expensive products, since they are…