Europe is heading into winter with natural gas reserves at their lowest since 2022 and prices more than doubled, and the same green mandates that gutted the continent's energy security are being pushed right now by the Biden administration on American families.
The European Union has hemorrhaged over €900 billion in extra energy costs since 2022, according to HotAir — even as total demand fell. That is not a market outcome. That is a policy cost, paid by every European household and business, for decisions their governments made to restrict supply and strangle domestic production.
Gas storage across Europe stood at roughly 67 percent full in September, well below the seasonal average of 80 percent. Germany, the continent's largest storage holder, is roughly half full and will miss its official 80 percent target this year. EU energy commissioner Dan Jorgensen warned of "very high" oil and gas prices ahead but claimed no supply issues are expected — the same kind of assurance officials give right before the shortages arrive. Jorgensen's proposed fix: postpone the introduction of methane emission rules on energy imports to ease market pressure. So the green mandate survives on paper, but gets suspended the moment it threatens to freeze voters. The rule was never about the climate. It was about control, and when control gets expensive, the mandate goes into a drawer.
Britain offers its own cautionary tale. The UK just announced a £2 billion Energy Wealth Fund, decades after Norway turned its North Sea petroleum revenues into a $2.4 trillion sovereign wealth fund. OilPrice reports that Treasury modelling found Britain could have accumulated roughly £1 trillion if it had invested its historical oil and gas tax receipts instead of spending them. Successive governments burned through the cash. Now, with the North Sea in decline and the government committed to ending new exploration licensing, Britain is trying to build a green investment fund off a dying basin.
The announcement coincided with approval of Shell's long-delayed Jackdaw gas field, which could boost UK domestic gas production by about 6 percent at peak output and contribute an estimated £2.9 billion to the British economy. Offshore Energies UK welcomed the move but noted that over £50 billion in potential North Sea investment remains available if ministers would approve more projects. They won't. The government's position is clear: approve just enough fossil fuel development to avoid political collapse, while maintaining a commitment to strangle future supply.
The pattern is the same across the Atlantic. Squeeze domestic production, drive up costs, suspend the rules when the pain gets too obvious, and keep the long-term agenda intact. The Biden administration's war on American oil and gas — the permitting freezes, the EPA mandates, the LNG export pauses — is importing Europe's failure wholesale.
Europe's leaders are finally admitting what they denied for years: you cannot run a modern economy on green wishes alone. The question is whether Washington will figure that out before American families get the same bill.
