Back in October it looked like the energy crisis in Europe might be a one-off but with cold weather in the forecast and not nearly enough natural gas, things are looking grim. Dutch TTF gas prices are up another 4% today and that will set a daily closing high.
The prices of power are at insane levels.
These are above the October peaks.
What's perhaps even more concerning is that forward contracts out one year for both power and natural gas are much higher than the previous peak, suggesting this crisis won't be solved any time soon.
This is where prices were October 1 and it was already a crisis then:
The current levels are crippling to heavy industry, particularly energy-intensive industry like aluminum smelting. It's simply not profitable to run the operation and that could leave the market short of supply.
