Europe's winter energy crisis

 AP:

As Europe heads into winter in the throes of an energy crisis, offices are getting chillier. Statues and historic buildings are going dark. Bakers who can’t afford to heat their ovens are talking about giving up, while fruit and vegetable growers face letting greenhouses stand idle.

In poorer eastern Europe, people are stocking up on firewood, while in wealthier Germany, the wait for an energy-saving heat pump can take half a year. And businesses don’t know how much more they can cut back.

“We can’t turn off the lights and make our guests sit in the dark,” said Richard Kovacs, business development manager for Hungarian burger chain Zing Burger. The restaurants already run the grills no more than necessary and use motion detectors to turn off lights in storage, with some stores facing a 750% increase in electricity bills since the beginning of the year.

With costs high and energy supplies tight, Europe is rolling out relief programs and plans to shake up electricity and natural gas markets as it prepares for rising energy use this winter. The question is whether it will be enough to avoid government-imposed rationing and rolling blackouts after Russia cut back natural gas needed to heat homes, run factories and generate electricity to a tenth of what it was before invading Ukraine.
...

Even if there is gas this winter, high prices already are pushing people and businesses to use less and forcing some energy-intensive factories like glassmakers to close.

It’s a decision also facing fruit and vegetable growers in the Netherlands who are key to Europe’s winter food supply: shutter greenhouses or take a loss after costs skyrocketed for gas heating and electric light.
...

There is much more in this long story that omits the biggest "told you so" in Europe when Trump was laughed out for telling them it was a mistake to rely on Russia for energy.  Europe was also hurt when US voters selected Biden who foolishly blocked drilling on several federally controlled sites and drove up the price of gas thereby funding Putin's war.  Biden even bought Russian energy before the Ukraine invasion.