EU Energy Crisis Highlights Need for Global Supply Chain Cooperation

The European Union is facing an energy price crisis due to the volatility of global oil and gas markets, according to EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen. He urged countries to consider measures to curb their natural gas demand and prepare for winter. The benchmark Dutch Title Transfer Facility natural gas price has risen above 70 euros ($79.74) per megawatt-hour, a level not seen since the 2022 energy crisis.

The skyrocketing energy bills have directly increased household electricity costs, weighing on Europeans' livelihoods and eroding industrial competitiveness and fueling broader inflation across the EU economy. In the short term, measures such as suppressing demand, accelerating storage, diversifying imports, and conserving energy are necessary to stabilize Europe's energy market.

However, these measures can only ease price pressures temporarily and cannot fundamentally free Europe from the grip of international oil and gas market volatility. The region's dependence on fossil fuels must be significantly reduced to mitigate systemic energy risks.

The green energy transition is the only viable path for Europe to achieve this goal, but it faces a hard bottleneck in its domestic industrial capacity. European manufacturers are constrained by persistently high energy prices, soaring labor costs, and stringent local production regulations, slowing the bloc's progress in replacing fossil fuels with renewable green energy.