Which states generate the most electricity from coal? According to May 2026 EIA data, Texas leads all states with 4,536 thousand MWh of coal-fired generation, followed by West Virginia (3,611 thousand MWh) and Kentucky (3,442 thousand MWh). But while West Virginia is 87.2% dependent on coal, it occupies a modest 8.95% share in Texas’s vast energy mix.
Last week, Russia recorded its highest estimated revenues from seaborne oil exports since the start of the war with Ukraine.
The main driver of this demand is the armed conflict and the resulting blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East. Due to supply problems, buyers are looking for additional sources of crude oil. This also applies to China which, although it has already secured reserves of the commodity, is also starting to increase purchases from the Russian Federation.
Russia’s record revenues from oil sales
Last week, Russia achieved record weekly revenues from seaborne oil exports since the beginning of the war. Oil companies there shipped about 3.99 million barrels of oil a day to foreign markets. Given the high prices, this significantly increased the value of Russian exports.
Bloomberg estimates that the total value of oil shipped from Russian ports last week was about $2.75 billion. That is about $180 million more than the previous week and the highest weekly figure since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Russian oil is now much more expensive than in previous months. As noted earlier, this is influenced by the situation in the global oil market, and in particular, the war in the Middle East. The price of Brent crude remained above $100 a barrel in September.
At the end of September, the price of this benchmark exceeded $103 per barrel. Earlier, prices rose further amid concerns about disruptions in oil supplies from the Middle East.
Average revenues for the last four weeks
The Kremlin has decided to limit fuel exports to support the domestic market. The ban on diesel exports by Russian producers has been extended until Sept. 30, and restrictions on the export of gasoline and some diesel fuels by other exporters remain in place for an extended period.
The UA News portal points out that an exceptional situation has arisen as a result, stating: “Russia cannot export as many petroleum products as before, but it has a surplus of crude oil that it cannot fully process domestically. Consequently, the oil surplus is diverted to the foreign market.”
This situation increases the volume of maritime exports. Russia’s current revenues have significantly exceeded the previous week’s value. To avoid drawing conclusions based on just one week, the agency also calculated average revenue over four weeks. This indicator is less susceptible to sharp short-term fluctuations in prices and volumes.
Over the past four weeks, the estimated average value of Russian oil exported by sea has been around $2.39 billion per week. That is about $290 million more than in the previous four-week period and the most since the second half of May.
Russia may continue to earn significant revenue from crude oil sales. As long as the price of Brent crude remains above $100 a barrel and Russian crude enjoys demand among buyers in Asia, Moscow can generate additional revenue, even despite operational problems at its own refineries.
This situation may change as supplies from the Middle East gradually resume. Reuters reported that exports from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates increased in September, and reconstruction of some infrastructure began after the attacks. This could ease pressure on the global market and affect the price of Russian oil, even if oil prices are expected to remain elevated throughout 2026 and 2027.
Nearly 100 US civil society groups have urged EU governments not to cave to pressure from oil and gas lobbyists and the White House as the European Commission moves to delay parts of its methane rules by a year.
“The US has done absolutely everything possible to actively deprive Europe of secure, reliable and diversified energy supplies,” said the group in a letter to EU energy ministers dated 29 September and circulated on Wednesday (30 September).
“The Trump administration is using its ‘energy dominance’ agenda to openly blackmail the Union into lowering its climate and human rights standards, including on methane,” they also said.
All operational US export terminals, many supplying Europe, have violated air pollution limits, and the EUs methane rules are “the last opportunity” to impose standards on US gas, the letter says.
“Let’s work together on both sides of the Atlantic,” they say.
The letter writers include global NGOs such as Greenpeace US and Friends of the Earth US but also smaller groups that live next to US gas export terminals such as the environmental organisation, For a Better Bayou.
The decision to postpone
In July, a group of US lawmakers also wrote to EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen, urging her to hold the line.
Democratic congressman Sean Casten, one of the letter’s authors, later visited Strasbourg and told EUobserver that the EU policymakers he met were “almost unanimously supportive of us pushing harder” to help them save the rules.
But over the summer, a majority of member states, including Germany, Europe’s largest gas market, became convinced that delay is necessary fearing gas exporters might reroute their supplies to easier markets.
During that time energy ministers from the US, Qatar, Nigeria and Algeria all warned EU regulation could disrupt fuel and gas supplies
On Tuesday, EU energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen signalled at an informal meeting of energy ministers in Dublin that he will propose delaying the regulation.
“I’ve already stated that on the methane regulation, a very important regulation for Europe, we stick to the objectives, we stick to our ambitions,” he said.
But, he continued, “after having listened to many, many member states, a big majority of member states in the union,” he decided “to look into possibilities of postponing the parts that are connected to imports by one year”.
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Crude oil flows from the Middle East are returning toward pre-war levels despite continued risks to shipping, according to separate estimates from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The European Investment Bank and BNP Paribas have agreed a €700 million guarantee programme designed to expand financing for European companies producing equipment for electricity grids.
The agreement targets a growing bottleneck in Europe’s energy system: manufacturers of transformers, cables, switchgear and other components are being asked to increase production while utilities and governments accelerate investment in transmission and distribution networks.
Under the deal, the EIB will provide up to €350 million in counter-guarantees, while BNP Paribas will commit an equivalent amount. The resulting €700 million portfolio of bank guarantees is expected to support companies investing in additional production capacity and supply contracts.
The European Investment Bank said the arrangement could stimulate as much as €2.8 billion in investment in the real economy.
The initiative is backed by the EU’s InvestEU programme and forms part of the EIB’s €1.5 billion Pan-EU Power Grid package. Guarantees are particularly important for infrastructure suppliers because large electricity projects often require manufacturers to provide financial guarantees before receiving contracts.
Those commitments can consume bank credit lines that companies might otherwise use to build factories, purchase machinery or finance working capital.
By sharing the risk with BNP Paribas, the EIB intends to increase the volume of guarantees available without requiring manufacturers to commit equivalent amounts of their own financing capacity.
The programme arrives as grid investment becomes one of the central constraints on European energy policy.
The EU is simultaneously attempting to expand renewable generation, electrify transport and industry, increase cross-border electricity trading and reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels.
European manufacturers face lengthy order books for some high-voltage equipment, particularly large transformers and specialised cables. Supply constraints can delay renewable projects and interconnectors even when planning permission and financing are available.
The EIB says its guarantee programme is intended to give manufacturers greater financial capacity to respond. The arrangement follows a similar partnership between the bank and BNP Paribas covering wind-energy manufacturing.
In February 2025, the two institutions agreed a €1 billion guarantee portfolio intended to support investment in the European wind industry. The EIB has subsequently expanded its focus from generation equipment to the networks required to transport electricity.
In 2025, the EIB Group invested €33 billion in energy projects worldwide, including €11.6 billion in grids and storage, according to the institution.
European energy policy has increasingly recognised that adding generating capacity without expanding grids can create congestion, delays and periods in which renewable electricity cannot reach consumers.
Political disagreements remain over how new infrastructure should be planned and financed.
Financing institutions are meanwhile moving ahead with programmes intended to expand the underlying industrial capacity.
For manufacturers, the EIB–BNP Paribas scheme does not provide €2.8 billion of direct public spending. Instead, public guarantees are being used to increase the volume of private financing available, with the EIB assuming part of the risk.
The distinction is central to InvestEU, which uses EU budget guarantees and EIB financing to attract additional private capital.
Europe’s electricity transition is increasingly dependent on this less visible part of the energy system. New wind farms, solar installations, nuclear reactors and industrial electrification projects ultimately require the same infrastructure: sufficient cables, substations, transformers and transmission capacity to move electricity from producers to users.
Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg have called on the European Commission to establish a specific EU renewable-energy target for 2040 as Brussels prepares the next stage of the bloc’s climate and energy legislation.
The three governments have written to Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen arguing that a post-2030 renewables target would give investors greater certainty, accelerate deployment and reduce European dependence on imported fossil fuels.
Their intervention comes as the Commission prepares a new renewable-energy framework covering the decade after 2030.
The EU currently has a legally binding target requiring renewable sources to account for at least 42.5 per cent of final energy consumption by 2030, with an ambition to reach 45 per cent.
There is, however, no equivalent renewables target for 2040.
Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg want that framework to contain a numerical target rather than rely solely on the EU’s overall greenhouse-gas reduction objective.
The proposal creates a policy divide with governments that want Brussels to use a broader definition of low-carbon or “clean” energy.
France, Sweden and Finland are among countries that have supported an approach allowing nuclear generation to contribute alongside renewable sources towards European decarbonisation targets.
France in particular operates the EU’s largest nuclear fleet and has repeatedly argued that European energy legislation should treat nuclear power according to its low carbon emissions rather than exclude it from frameworks designed specifically around renewable technologies.
Luxembourg, by contrast, has long opposed nuclear energy and has raised concerns about radioactive waste, safety and the financing of new reactors.
The argument is therefore not simply about the scale of the 2040 ambition. It concerns the structure of European energy investment over the next 15 years.
Renewables accounted for 26.2 per cent of EU energy consumption in 2025, according to Commission figures.
Investment will have to increase substantially if the Union is to meet its existing target before any higher post-2030 requirement is introduced.
Grid capacity is another constraint. Wind and solar generation can be built faster than many traditional power stations, but projects increasingly depend on new transmission lines, interconnectors, storage and distribution infrastructure.
The latest initiative also sits alongside the EU’s legally binding 2040 climate target.
In March, the Union formally approved legislation requiring net greenhouse-gas emissions to fall by 90 per cent from 1990 levels by 2040. EU Today reported on the final approval of the 2040 target, which is intended to bridge the gap between the bloc’s 2030 commitments and climate neutrality by 2050.
How that 90 per cent reduction is achieved is now moving to the centre of the policy debate.
For Spain and Portugal, greater renewable generation is also tied to their ambitions to expand electricity exports from the Iberian Peninsula into the rest of Europe. Limited interconnection capacity across the Pyrenees has historically restricted those flows.
The Commission’s post-2030 framework will therefore have consequences beyond environmental policy. It will influence investment decisions in power generation, grids, industrial electrification, hydrogen, storage and manufacturing.
The political question confronting the Commission is whether those decisions should be driven by a dedicated renewable-energy benchmark or by a technology-neutral emissions objective under which nuclear and renewable generation compete for investment.
With the 2040 climate target already fixed in law, the next dispute is increasingly about the energy system that will be built to reach it.
Shareholders in the Shell Plc-led LNG Canada venture greenlit plans to double its liquefied natural gas export capacity, forging ahead with the multibillion-dollar investment as key customers in Asia face the biggest supply shock of recent times.
European governments are racing to blunt a fuel shock that even some analysts now refuse to forecast, as Brent crude holds near $100 a barrel and diesel prices climb across Europe.
The international oil market has been expensive for months. What has changed is the confidence of the people paid to explain it. JPMorgan told clients on Sept. 17 that, for the first time since fighting began around Iran about seven months earlier, its commodities team no longer has a baseline view of how the disruption ends.
“We simply don’t know how to model the endgame,” the bank’s analysts wrote, after several economic thresholds they once assumed would force a diplomatic off-ramp, including oil above $100 a barrel, had already been crossed.
The bank said a Brent price near $90 would have been consistent with known supply and demand in September. Futures instead traded around $100 and higher as traders priced the risk of further losses that no one can yet measure. By Monday, front-month Brent was still hovering near $99 a barrel.
Inventories are doing little to cushion the blow. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has said prices are likely to stay elevated until Middle East oil trade is restored and stocks can be rebuilt. The International Energy Agency’s September report put the scale of the drain in starker terms: observed global inventories fell another 95 million barrels in August, taking the cumulative draw since February to 507 million barrels, or about 2.8 million barrels a day. World oil supply is now projected to average 100.7 million barrels a day in 2026, down 5.7 million from a year earlier.
Diesel shortages are acute
In some countries, such as Hungary, there is a major imbalance in terms of available energy sources. Crude held in strategic storage remains ample, but diesel is quickly running out. Data from the Hungarian Hydrocarbon Stockpiling Association show gas oil stocks at 520.3 kilotons at the end of January and about 390 kilotons at the end of both July and August. That thinner diesel cushion matters in a country where more than 1.3 million passenger cars run on the fuel and the regional market is competing for the same scarce imports.
Pump prices have already moved. Official and commercial trackers put Hungarian diesel around 701 forints a liter in late September on some official series and closer to 730 forints on daily station averages — well above the roughly 593 forints recorded at the end of June. The original worry in Budapest was not whether prices would rise, but how quickly 800 forints would stop looking like a distant ceiling.
That speed is not a mystery to central bankers. Bank of Slovenia research covering euro-area data from 2005 through 2026 found that a 10% rise in Brent lifts pretax diesel and gasoline prices by about 6.5% and 6.2%, respectively, over the longer term. A large share of the increase shows up at stations within the first two weeks — faster than the physical chain of shipping, refining and wholesale delivery would suggest.
The European Central Bank has reached a similar conclusion and added an unwelcome twist: refinery margins can amplify the shock. During the spring spike, Brent briefly reached $138 a barrel while diesel at the refinery gate jumped to $197. ECB staff later estimated that refining margins were contributing about 41 euro cents a liter to euro-area retail diesel in mid-September, and they told reporters those diesel margins may not peak until October.
The way down is slower than the way up. Taxes, refining and transport costs, inventories, margins and local competition all delay relief when crude finally eases. That asymmetry is why governments are acting now, before higher fuel bills work through freight, food and services and lift broader inflation.
Europe-wide crisis
The policy dilemma is the same from Lisbon to Warsaw: protect households and trucking firms without writing a blank check for fossil-fuel consumption. Europe has answered with a patchwork rather than a single rule. Some governments cap retail prices. Others cut excise taxes, sometimes below the European Union minimum. A third group aims help at farmers, haulers and other heavy users. A few still let global prices hit consumers with no cushion at all. The result is that the same barrel of oil can produce pump prices that differ dramatically at the pump across Europe.
Here are just a few examples of what Europe looks like in this regard.
Austria has been running a mineral-oil tax cut of 1.9 euro cents a liter into the end of September.
Belgium has implemented an official price ceiling.
Croatia cut diesel excise duty by another 3 cents, taking it 10 cents below the EU floor; Zagreb says the average diesel price is 1.91 euros a liter instead of 2.26 euros without the intervention.
Cyprus is offering an 8.33-cent discount through Nov. 30.
Luxembourg is absorbing 5 cents of the pump price from July through December.
Malta is using direct state aid to keep prices below the euro-area average.
Portugal decided on Sept. 17 to recycle extra value-added tax receipts from more expensive fuel into tax relief worth about 1.3 billion euros through year-end.
Slovenia posted official maxima of 1.748 euros for gasoline and 2.012 euros for diesel in the week of Sept. 22-28.
Spain has kept an excise cut below the EU minimum through Sept. 30.
Italy reduced and capped diesel duty into early October.
Montenegro and Serbia combine retail caps with lower excise taxes.
Targeted aid is running in parallel
Greece extended a 10-cent-a-liter diesel subsidy into October and is preparing a heating-oil package.
France steered relief to agriculture, high-mileage workers and construction rather than a blanket cut.
Ireland is rebating duty for commercial haulers and bus operators.
Spain added a 402 million-euro program for truckers on top of its general tax reduction.
Italy is offering carriers a tax credit for earlier extra costs.
Larger packages are still moving through parliaments
Germany will cut energy tax by 14 cents a liter from Oct. 1 through year-end, about 17 cents once lower VAT is counted, in a 2.5 billion-euro package.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said drivers who depend on a car every day “are reaching their breaking point.”
Berlin is also talking with the oil industry about a temporary price cap modeled on Luxembourg or Belgium, aimed at Jan. 1, 2027.
The Czech government will restore a station-margin ceiling from Oct. 1, cut diesel duty to the EU minimum and cap retail margins at 2.50 koruna a liter.
Poland has floated a 60% levy on oil companies’ extra profits to finance about 4 billion zlotys of price relief, though the plan faces parliamentary and constitutional hurdles.
The International Energy Agency has described the response as global, not merely European. In a matter of months, the number of countries applying fuel subsidies rose from 16 to 38, and the number cutting energy taxes rose from 40 to 57. Pew Research Center, drawing on IEA tallies from mid-June, counted 113 countries that had taken at least one energy-cost measure after the Iran war, including tax changes in 55 countries and fuel subsidies in 32. The agency’s own warning is implicit in those numbers: governments are treating the symptom at the pump because they cannot reopen the Strait of Hormuz from a finance ministry or end the war in Ukraine.
The United States and its energy industry are making a killing selling crude oil and its derivatives to the rest of the world. The world’s largest economy is filling part of the gap left by supply cuts from Gulf countries due to the war in Iran, and from Russia due to Ukrainian attacks on its refineries. But everything has its limits, and the breaking point was reached on Tuesday, September 22, when diesel surpassed $6.50 a gallon at U.S. pumps.
Several key German industry groups and energy analysts are warning that Germany could face severe gas supply issues, and potentially entirely deplete its storage, if an exceptionally cold winter occurs. Of course, predictions of this sort have been made off and on in recent years. Germany has never actually run out of gas before. The question is now how alarmist these warnings are and how realistic an actual gas and energy shortage is this time around.
Currently, the government argues there will be no gas shortage. However, storage operators, energy executives and some economists argue that a mild winter should be manageable and a brutally cold one could get tight enough to force industry to cut production and send prices soaring.
One of the most dire warnings comes from Markus Krebber, chief executive of RWE, Germany’s largest power producer.
“If we get a mild winter, everything will be fine,” he told Focus in an interview. “If the winter is hard, there can be significantly higher prices. And it can get tight.”
Krebber said Germany is entering the season “with the lowest gas storage levels of the past 20 years” – lower even than in 2022, when Russian pipeline flows collapsed. “That works if we have a normal winter. If we get a particularly cold winter, it can get scarce.”
He has also warned that if Germany does not add more power supply, “there will be distribution battles for electricity” among industry, data centers and the electrification of heat and transport.
The data supports Krebber’s concerns. The German gas storage association (INES) warns that Germany entered September at its lowest storage levels in 15 years, at around 53 to 56 percent. INES models show that if refills remain sluggish and if Germany experiences an extremely cold winter, similar to the weather of 2010, storage reserves could be exhausted as early as January or February, potentially leaving daily supply shortfalls of up to 25 percent.
German underground gas caverns are roughly 20 percentage points below last year’s level and far under the seasonal norm. While Berlin’s own rules call for most gas storage sites to reach 80 percent by Nov. 1, almost no one now expects that to happen.
“By now all the experts agree: these 80 percent are already technically almost impossible to achieve and also not realistic,” Klaus Müller, president of the Federal Network Agency, said in a Phoenix television interview. He added that storage is not the whole story. “We have created our own capacities with four liquefied natural gas terminals. We can obtain gas from Norway, Belgium, Holland, France.”
Energy market consultants and industry group analyses point out that weak summer gas refills – driven by unfavorable price spreads between summer and winter gas and price volatility from global conflicts – have left Germany reliant on steady ongoing imports. They point out that cold weather is not the only factor, as disruptions could be exacerbated by pipeline outages, reduced LNG flows, escalating conflict in Ukraine or the Middle East, and various other scenarios. All of this comes at a time when Germany’s buffer is much thinner than in previous years.
Not everyone is panicking, though. The Federal Network Agency, Germany’s energy regulator, has also acknowledged the low storage levels but stated they do not currently indicate an imminent crisis or inevitable shortage.
Claudia Kemfert, an energy economist at the German Institute for Economic Research, says that a distinction must be made between shortages and higher prices. She has said an acute shortage is not her base case, but that low stocks leave the system more exposed if cold weather, high LNG prices and supply interruptions hit at once. Relying on last-minute cargoes, she has argued, is “risky and expensive.”
Historical weather data supports less extreme gas shortage scenarios. On average, the past ten winters have been extremely mild in Germany, with the exception of last year’s winter, which was exceptionally cold. If there is a repeat this year or the winter is even colder, it could indeed tip Germany into an energy crisis, but the odds appear to be against such a scenario.
In the meantime, industrial companies in Germany are already taking precautionary measures, as a severe cold snap would likely force curtailments on industrial consumers first to stretch remaining gas through February and March to protect vital natural gas deliveries to households.
Another piece of good news it that the European Union as a whole is near 70 percent in terms of gas storage, far better than Germany. This means that the crisis is unlikely to grip all of Europe. Still, Germany is Europe’s largest economy and a key hub of industry. Any gas or energy crisis in the country would have broad repercussions across Europe.
“Electricity self-consumption” and “energy democracy” are the new fancy terms the Greek government has introduced to convince citizens of its new policy framework and promotion of increased personal responsibility regarding lower energy cost in exchange of personal investments. A new framework for “electricity self-consumption” came into force on Monday, following a ministerial decision by Environment […]
With the national price of diesel hitting $6.05 as California hits $8.00 per gallon, one wonders what will happen to the trucking industry that delivers the goods across America. Labor is the largest expense for trucking, so many trucking companies are planning to switch to autonomous trucks. In the meantime, a slew of independent trucking companies are biting the dust. This is a fundamental change in our economic system. ⁃ Patrick Wood Editor.
Swedish freight company Einride’s announcement last month that it plans to deploy 500 Tesla Semis on US roads, the largest publicly announced commitment to electric Class 8 trucks, suggests a shift toward fleet electrification. It also brings the next phase of trucking technology into focus: the gradual commercialization of autonomous freight.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has targeted late 2026 or early 2027 for self-driving capabilities to begin working on the Semi. That remains a Musk target, not a confirmed commercial rollout. Any version requiring a human operator would be supervised automation, like FSD on Tesla sedans, SUVs, and the Cybertruck.
NEWS: Google announced a major electric trucking project in Texas featuring Tesla Semi.
Google, Nevoya and Center for Green Market Activation will deploy:
• 25 electric semi trucks.
• Dedicated charging infrastructure
• An all-electric freight route between Houston & Dallas. pic.twitter.com/ZxSbFIJk5C
Needham analysts Chris Pierce and Mackenzie Holleran see a broader industry inflection point approaching in 2027, as factory-integrated autonomous trucks begin reaching fleets in greater numbers. Their note to clients says automation in trucking will lower operating costs, while longer operating hours could accelerate deliveries and shift market share toward larger carriers.
The analysts said that driverless trucking is already moving beyond technical demonstrations as developers expand routes, remove onboard safety observers and secure carrier commitments. The next test is whether carriers enter a mass-adoption supercycle to automate their fleets and drive down labor costs.
“We believe the debate has shifted from ‘can autonomous trucking work?’ to ‘how quickly can it scale?'” the analysts said.
They continued, “We see compelling benefits for early adopters and eventual trucking industry consolidation, underwritten by the increasing rate of adoption as industry participants see autonomy as a driver of share gain tilting the capacity playing field to lower cost providers capable of driving longer routes in shorter timeframes better satisfying customer demand.”
The analysts identified Aurora as the industry leader, citing expanded routes and operating conditions, customer contracts and the removal of safety observers from certain trucks in July. Kodiak targets observer removal by year-end, with Plus AI targeting driverless operations in 2027.
They noted that long-haul freight “represents the earliest commercial opportunity for autonomous trucking.”
Diesel prices are breaking records across Europe, and Poland is no exception, with prices for the essential fuel currently hitting record highs. Now, the conservative Polish opposition is pointing out that the situation may only get much worse.
“We will soon see increases in product prices as well,” warns Mariusz Błaszczak, the vice president of Law and Justice (PiS) and head of the PiS parliamentary club, in a new X post.
“Diesel the most expensive ever! This may be just the beginning,” he wrote. “All it took was for the government to scrap the fuel price reduction mechanism, and within a week prices shot up. The effect? Drivers, farmers, and carriers are paying for the government’s decisions today. And soon we’ll see hikes in product prices too.”
DIESEL NAJDROŻSZY W HISTORII!
8,75 zł za litr oleju napędowego – a na niektórych stacjach drożej. Pb95 dobija 8 zł. A to może być dopiero początek.
Wystarczyło, że rząd wygasił mechanizm obniżający ceny paliw, a w ciągu tygodnia ceny wystrzeliły w górę.
“PLN 8.75 per liter of diesel — and even more at some stations. 95-octane petrol is reaching PLN 8. And this may be just the beginning,” he added.
“The government should immediately reinstate the fuel-price reduction mechanism and keep it in place as long as the crisis in the Middle East continues. Poles cannot pay for the government’s inaction every time they fill up!” Błaszczak wrote.
According to the e-petrol.pl price report, on Wednesday, a liter of diesel cost an average of PLN 8.75 (€2.02) at Polish gas stations, PLN 0.36 more than a week earlier. A liter of 95-octane unleaded petrol rose by an average of PLN 0.26, to PLN 7.89, within a week. The average price of a liter of LPG, which cost PLN 2.95 on Wednesday, increased by PLN 0.06.
E-petrol analysts emphasize that the average diesel price recorded on Wednesday is the highest in the portal’s history. In their view, the unfavorable prices at stations are due both to the systematic rise in oil prices that has been underway since the end of August and to significant increases in wholesale fuel prices. They added that, in the case of LPG, higher bills are related to the more expensive supply of this fuel to stations.
On Sept. 1, the government ended the Fuel Price Reduction (CPN) package, which had been in place for the final weeks of the school holidays, from Aug. 17 to 31. Under the program, the VAT rate on certain fuels, in particular gas and diesel, was reduced from 23 percent to 8 percent. At the same time, maximum prices announced by the Minister of Energy were in force. Sales above the maximum price were punishable by a fine of up to PLN 1 million.
Neighboring Germany currently has higher diesel prices, at €2.32 a liter, also a record high. Only a few EU countries have a higher price, such as Denmark, which is currently at €2.60 a liter.
There are fears that rising diesel and natural gas prices across Europecould result in a major energy crisis over the coming months. European natural gas prices also rose to a three-year high of €80 per megawatt-hour (€/MWh) and many countries, such as Germany, are significantly behind on efforts to fill their reserves before the cold winter months arrive.
The EU energy label, as provided for by Regulation (EU) 2017/1369, aims at promoting the uptake of more efficient energy-related products. It aims to help consumers make informed choices by facilitating comparisons of product alternatives with different features. The label focuses on the energy efficiency of the product during the use phase, but can also include other environment-related aspects.
For decades, Washington has justified its military presence in the Middle East as necessary to protect global energy security. American naval forces would safeguard shipping, military partnerships would deter attacks on oil-producing states, and sanctions would restrain governments regarded as threats to the US-led regional order. The promise was simple: American power would keep energy […]
Brussels/Copenhage (enr) – Increasing the uptake of renewable energy is key to safeguarding Europe’s energy security as the EU seeks to heavily reduce CO2 emissions and become independent from imported fossil fuels, European Environment Agency (EEA) Executive Director Leena Ylä-Mononen said.
“Shifting to the sustainable future by improving our circular economy, uptake of renewables, improving energy efficiency – all this is central to Europe’s push to reduce our dependency and reliance on energy imports, fossil fuels, and imports of natural resources,” she said in an interview with the European Newsroom (enr) published Tuesday.
Following a summer leaving Europe scarred by heatwaves, drought and wildfires across the continent, the EEA chief renewed calls to speed up the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate “the increasing magnitude of climate-related disasters and related losses.” She argued that breaking away from fossil fuels and accelerating the transition to renewable energy is a crucial piece of the puzzle.
At the same time, she pointed to the typical increase of gas prices during “a period of cold weather.” Ylä-Mononen called for for “flexibilities” when it comes to energy storage, “so that we would have a bit of more buffer for the citizens when the hard times come.”
In a report published in July, the EEA warned that the EU “remains vulnerable to external fossil fuel supply shocks, as gas prices still drive EU wholesale electricity prices.” The report said gas price fluctuations in early 2026 cost the EU 13 billion Euro by mid-April while consumers saved 29 billion Euro thanks to renewable energy, making it “the system’s most effective shock absorber.”
Ylä-Mononen said that “many aspects and solutions are needed indeed to protect also the most vulnerable households.” She cited innovative solutions such as using electric vehicles’ batteries to power homes “as a specific reserve then to feed back in electricity when the prices are high.”
The EEA chief pointed out that ramping up local renewable energy sources was particularly difficult for cities. “Cities in particular have a challenge because their whole energy and also the mobility infrastructure is based very much still on the fossil economy.”
Cities had “limited possibilities to have individual windmills,” she said. However, she added, solar panels are “a feasible option, especially if the city or the national authorities are supporting that type of investment.”
The European Environment Agency (EEA) is the EU agency that provides independent environmental data, assessments and analysis to support policymaking in Europe.
Cover image: picture alliance / Hans Lucas | Imen Ben Youssef
The profile of social activism in North Africa is changing. Young people in the region shifted away from demanding regime change after the thwarted hopes of the 2011 Arab uprisings and the 2019 Hirak movement in Algeria. Now, they tend to seek practical improvements in their social and economic conditions rather than wholesale political reform.
Many of these new social movements focus on environmental concerns, and increasingly on the impact of global warming. North Africa is among the regions in the world most affected by climate change. But its countries are also some of the most promising sites for renewable energy generation, given their abundant sunshine and proximity to the European market. Activists have targeted some renewables projects, testifying to a feeling that authorities are failing to ensure energy transitions are fair and meaningful.
These trends in activism in North Africa match a recent turn in European engagement with the region, away from support for political reform and towards socioeconomic issues. This includes cooperation on clean energy projects. But Europeans should bear in mind that cooperation with North African governments on projects that ignore local interests will fall short of the objective of promoting greater opportunity and long-term stability in the region. This underlines the importance of including local businesses and civil society representatives in initiatives from the very start.
Changing social movements
The Arab uprisings and Hirak protests were driven in large part by social and economic concerns, and sought a political remedy by calling for a change of government. But hopes for better politics have since foundered across North Africa. The region’s protests and social movements now tend to focus on practical and often locally based demands for a more effective state and better services for communities. The 2025 Gen Z protests in Morocco, for example, began as a response to failings in maternity health care before swelling into wider calls for social justice. The shift to more issue-based activism reflects North Africans’ disappointment in past attempts at political reform as well as long-simmering social tensions. These include anger at poor governance and the strain rapid urbanisation puts on jobs and housing.
The shift to more issue-based activism reflects North Africans’ disappointment in past attempts at political reform as well as long-simmering social tensions
But climate change is also encroaching ever more on North Africans’ quality of life. Historically a water-scarce region, North Africa is now experiencing extreme temperatures, rising sea levels, drought and desertification. Once-fertile agricultural land is becoming barren, and flooding from extreme weather events exacerbates the problems for farmers and food supplies. Climate change is also contributing to power cuts and water shortages, as well as catastrophes from flash floods to wildfires. One opinion poll in 2024 showed that one in six people in North Africa had experienced harm from climate change in the previous two years (or knew somebody who had), and that 71% of North Africans saw it as a threat.
With governments often failing to implement policies to mitigate climate impacts, social movements have adopted an environmental focus. These movements sometimes blend protest with community self-help initiatives, and are often local rather than national. Their less explicitly political nature brings them a measure of tolerance by authorities, as does the fact that the movements often pursue environmental objectives that governments also embrace. But activists still face similar restrictions to all civil society movements in North Africa, at times drawing surveillance and repression.
Changing the environment
Such climate-related movements have sprung up across North Africa. In Morocco, a group of Tangier-based NGOs and unions halted a building development that would have involved deforestation, and they now publish an annual report on local environmental issues. Youth for Climate Tunisia trains young people to mobilise on climate issues and organises digital campaigns. The Egyptian group Greenish promotes climate education and capacity building for local communities. Algeria has several community-based groups that work on improving access to water and countering desertification.
Other groups focus on wider environmental concerns. Egypt’s VeryNile pioneered efforts to work with local fishers to collect and recycle plastic pollution from the Nile. In Tunisia, local protests against the impact of phosphate processing in Gabès snowballed after a series of toxic gas leaks in October 2025, becoming a mass movement that continues almost a year later.
But North African social movements also mobilise when green transitions disadvantage local communities and marginalised groups. As North African countries increasingly seek foreign investment in renewable energy projects, some communities worry that land and water resources will be diverted to benefit wealthy elites and foreign investors. In Tunisia, solar projects have aroused local opposition because they take land out of community use and reinforce regional inequalities. In Morocco, solar megaprojects such as the plant in Ouarzazate have prompted anger in nearby communities because of the amount of water they consume.
Changing European policy
One thing that unites these disparate movements is that activists seek concrete improvements in quality of life, as well as a bigger role in determining their countries’ futures. This aligns with an increasing sense in Europe that the best way for the EU and member states to promote rights and opportunity in North Africa is through a focus on socioeconomic development.
As the EU’s 2025 Pact for the Mediterranean showed, European policymakers aim to cooperate with North African partners on tangible initiatives that match local government priorities, including in green energy and water management. But the environment-focused social movements should remind European policymakers that working only with governments is not enough to ensure progress on economic and social rights, as I argued in an ECFR policy brief last year. The EU must frame its projects in a way that gives local populations as much agency as possible, by breaking down barriers for small businesses and including civil society in project design and planning.
The EU must also ensure that the projects it supports genuinely offer mutual benefit. In climate policy, the pact’s logic of “a partnership of equals” means European support for renewable energy projects including solar and wind power and the production of green hydrogen. Such projects would then supply clean energy for Europe and promote North African development as well as reduce local energy costs. In turn, greater opportunities and lower prices in the region could help promote the stability that European policymakers also seek.
But not all climate and environmental projects meet these goals—as the local criticisms show. To fulfil the promise of clean energy projects for both sides, Europeans must complement their investment in power generation with other measures to limit environmental trade-offs and to help benefits to flow to local communities. These should include infrastructure development and technology transfer to build up a local clean energy ecosystem. That is the best way for Europe to help ensure that the aspirations expressed in North African environmental movements are met.
In July 2026, the price of fuels and lubricants for personal transport in the EU increased by 16.9% compared with July 2025. This followed year-on-year increases of 20.7% in May and 13.7% in June.
In 25 of 27 EU countries, fuels and lubricants prices were higher in July 2026, compared with July 2025. In 13 countries, July annual increases were larger than those in June 2026. However, in most countries (24), the annual rate of change in July was lower than in May 2026, when 4 countries registered annual price increases exceeding 30%.
In July 2026, compared with July 2025, the highest increases were recorded in Romania (+24.2%), Germany and Lithuania (+22.9% each), Bulgaria (+22.2%), the Netherlands (+22.0%) and Finland (+20.5%). Prices dropped slightly in Hungary (-0.1%), while the lowest increases were recorded in Sweden (+1.2%) and Ireland (+3.2%).
Diesel prices up 4.3%, petrol up 4.7% compared with June 2026
On a monthly basis, in July 2026, EU consumers saw diesel prices increase by 4.3% and petrol by 4.7%, compared with the previous month. In June 2026, diesel had dropped by 6.4%, and petrol by 4.2% relative to May 2026.
Between June and July 2026, diesel prices increased in 17 EU countries. The highest increases were registered in Poland (+13.4%), Germany (+12.7%) and Greece (+12.1%). The prices dropped in 9 EU countries, with the largest decreases in Cyprus (-7.9%), Sweden (-7.4%) and Ireland (-6.4%).
When it comes to petrol prices, 14 countries recorded increases and 12 countries recorded decreases in prices between June and July 2026. The largest increases were in Poland (+17.2%), Germany (+11.0%) and Spain (+7.1%), while the largest decreases were recorded in Sweden (-11.1%), Cyprus (-5.4%) and Ireland (-4.1%).
This data comes from Eurostat data collection for the compilation of the harmonized index of consumer prices(HICP), which is used to measure inflation in the EU.
Fuel prices in Malta have been fixed since 2020, therefore there was no change.
More than a decade ago, a group of snipers shot up an electrical substation in Silicon Valley, striking power transformers and disabling the substation for nearly a month. The shooters were never identified; similar substation shootings, some by neo-Nazis, have taken place since. The longer Christopher Cox studies the American power grid—looking at aging infrastructure and ongoing transformer shortages, specialized manufacturing and rising demand, the massive energy consumption of data centers and whiplash usage of large language models—the more vulnerable it seems. “Somehow, we’ve made the industrial equivalent of a Fabergé egg the linchpin of our civilization,” Cox writes. “What would happen if someone started breaking them?”
The hope of restoring the grid would fade as fossil fuel supplies were exhausted, because so many utilities rely on them to “black-start” their generating units. A 2010 report called “High-Impact, Low-Frequency Event Risk to the North American Bulk Power System,” prepared by the Energy Department and NERC, condensed the entire disaster movie that would follow into a single paragraph: “The supply of food, water and fuel would degrade within days. The facile communication of information to the general population would be greatly complicated by the loss of cellphones, internet access and television. The economy would virtually shut down as electronic transactions could no longer be processed. After several days, widespread social unrest and confusion would ensue.” Thirsty, starved, dirty and surrounded by the useless machines we once depended on, we would be lucky if our misery ended at “confusion.”
The Commission adopted a legislative proposal to simplify Regulation (EU) 2017/1369 on Energy Labelling and Regulation (EU) 2020/740 on Tyre Labelling on 24 June 2026 (COM (2026) 565 final). The objective of this proposal is to ensure simpler and more effective implementation of the rules without undermining the original policy objectives that give customers the right to have energy and tyre labels in display at the point of sale.
This adopted act and its accompanying impact assessment are now open for feedback for a period of 8 weeks until 15 October 2026. All feedback received will be summarised by the European Commission and presented to the European Parliament and Council with the aim of feeding into the legislative debate.
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