UK bills could rise – as Europe’s gas consumption falls by ‘unprecedented’ amount
Here’s a quiz question: how much would you say the supply of non-Russian gas to Europe (including the UK) has gone up since the invasion of Ukraine?
It’s a pretty important question. After all, in the years before the invasion, Russian gas (coming in mostly through pipelines but, to a lesser extent, also on liquefied natural gas [LNG] tankers) accounted for more than a third of our gas.
If Europe was going to stop relying on Russian gas, it would need either to source that gas from somewhere else or to learn to live without it. And while there might, a few decades hence, be a way of surviving without gas while also nursing important heavy industries, right now the technology isn’t there.
For decades, Europe – especially Germany, but also, to a lesser extent Italy and other parts of Eastern Europe – built their economic models on building advanced machinery, with their plants fuelled by cheap Russian gas.
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All of which is why that question matters. And so too does the answer. The conventional wisdom is that Europe has shored up its supplies of gas from elsewhere. There’s more methane coming in from Azerbaijan, for one thing. And more too in the form of LNG from Qatar and (especially) the US.
But now let’s ponder the actual data. And it shows you something else: in 2024 as a whole, the amount of gas Europe had from non-Russian sources was up by a mere 0.5% compared with the 2017-21 average.
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This isn’t to say that there wasn’t more gas coming in, primarily from LNG tankers, most (but not all) of them from the US. But that extra LNG was only enough to compensate for a sharp fall in gas produced domestically, for instance by the UK and the Netherlands. The upshot was that to all extents and purposes, the non-Russian part of the European gas mix was basically flat.
That’s a serious problem, given the amount of gas coming in from Russia has fallen by 37% over the same period. Essentially, Europe’s total gas consumption has fallen by an unprecedented amount without being supplemented from elsewhere.
Now, to some extent, some of that lost energy has been supplemented by extra power from renewable sources. The UK, for instance, saw the biggest amount of its power ever coming from wind and other green sources last year. However, green electricity only goes so far. It cannot heat houses with gas boilers; it cannot provide the intense heat needed for many industrial processes. And look at the numbers in Europe and you can see the consequences.
With the continent having effectively to ration gas, the industrial heart has borne the brunt. Look at chemicals production in the UK and it’s down by more than a third in recent years. Look at energy-intensive industrial output in Germany and it’s down by 20% since the invasion of Ukraine. The continent is deindustrialising, and the shortage of gas is at least part of the explanation.
And that shortage is about to become even more acute in the coming months. Because the flow of gas coming from Russia is going to fall yet further. There are, broadly speaking, four routes for Russian gas into Europe. The Yamal pipelines are old Soviet pipes running through Belarus; the Nord Stream pipes run (or rather ran) under the Baltic. There are pipes going through Ukraine towards Slovakia and Austria and then there’s the newest pipes, running through the Black Sea to Turkey.
As of late last year, only two of these routes were still operational: Yamal had been shuttered following sanctions by both sides in 2022; Nord Stream was damaged by an attack later in 2022. And now, following a failure to renew the terms of a transit agreement between Ukraine and Russia, the Ukraine route has just shut too. The amounts of gas we’re talking about aren’t enormous: around 4% of total European supply, as of 2024. But even so, it’s a further blow and will mean more rationing in the coming months. European deindustrialisation will probably continue or accelerate.
According to Jack Sharples, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies: “In the big picture, the loss of 15 billion cubic metres in 2025 for Europe as a whole equates to 4% of supply in 2024. So, enough to push the market a little tighter in the context of a global LNG market that remains tight, but nothing like the impact of losing Russian pipeline gas supply in 2022.”
Still, this isn’t the only challenge facing the market right now. This time last year, the continent had a near-unprecedented amount of gas stored away. But the amount of gas in storage – a key buffer – has dropped rapidly in recent months, partly because it’s been a little colder than in the previous year, partly because gas has had to step in to provide power when the wind dropped and renewables output disappointed.
The result is the continent starts the year with gas storage at a much lower level than policymakers would like – only 71% full. Admittedly this is higher than the nerve-wrackingly low level of early 2022 (54%). And it’s implausible that Europe will actually exhaust its supplies. But it makes it more likely that the continent will have to pay high prices in the summer to replenish its supplies.
Put it all together and you can understand why wholesale gas prices are climbing higher. The UK may not receive any gas directly from Russia, but it’s plugged into this market, so any shortages on the other side of the channel directly affect the prices we pay here too. And those prices are now up to the highest level since the spring of 2023. This is, it’s worth saying, way lower than the highs of 2022. But it’s enough to suggest bills might be heading up soon.
In 2019, nine men were jailed for raping and abusing two teenage girls living in a children’s home in Bradford.
One of the victims, Fiona Goddard, says more than 50 men raped her.
When the government began to talk about offering councils money for local inquiries, Fiona hoped Bradford would be one of the first to take up the offer. But there didn’t seem to be much enthusiasm.
The council was quick to point out that there had already been an independent case review into Fiona’s case, along with four other victims.
This, then, was Fiona’s first reasoning for wanting a national inquiry: The council felt it had done all that needed to be done. Fiona didn’t.
The Independent review, published in July 2021, found that while in the children’s home, Fiona “went missing almost on a daily basis”. The police attitude was that she could look after herself – she was “street-wise”.
There was “agreement by all agencies that Fiona was either at risk of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) or actively being sexually abused and exploited”. But “this was not addressed by any single agency”.
And “when Fiona became pregnant at the age of 15, there was little curiosity or enquiry who the father was”.
So, obvious failings were discovered.
The predictable response was that lessons had been learned and new processes put in place. But no one seemed to be held accountable.
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Grooming gangs: What happened?
Ms Goddard told Sky News: “In my serious case review she [Jane Booth, the independent chair] found seven incidences at least, in them records that she found, of them not reporting sexual abuse or rape or assault, from as young as eight years old, and one of the incidences I literally turned up covered in blood and they didn’t report it.
“That is not just misunderstanding a crime, that is making intentional decisions not to report the sexual abuse of a child.”
She adds: “Let’s not forget, these people still work within social services and the police force.”
Not only did this Independent review not satisfy Fiona, but it also didn’t begin to reflect the levels and scale of abuse Fiona had experienced outside of Bradford.
‘I literally turned up covered in blood and they didn’t report it,’ Fiona says
Asked where she was trafficked to, Fiona rattles off a list of cities.
“Blackburn, Rotherham, Rochdale, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Oldham – never Telford, I’d never even heard of Telford until it all came out if I’m honest – Nottingham, Oxford.”
Then she remembers she didn’t go to Oxford – men from Oxford came to her – but the point is made.
Local enquiries can’t possibly begin to explore the networks of men who traffic women, often down routes of drug trafficking being done by the same gangs.
Bradford Council told Sky News it contributed to the national Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) and published more than 70 reports where child sexual exploitation was discussed and has implemented findings from the independent local review which included Fiona’s case.
Fiona believes there are numerous connections leading back to Bradford – but victims from each city often believe their abusers are at the centre of it.
We’ve spoken to grooming victims across the country, and in 2022, a case was reopened in Humberside after a Sky News investigation, where we found diary entries, texts, photos, and school reports all indicating that teenage victims had been abused.
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Telford child abuse victims speak out
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The women who blew whistle on Rotherham
One of them was “Anna”, who also wants a national inquiry. She believes there is a national pattern of police forces not believing victims or even criminalising them instead.
Obtaining her own police records using a Subject Access Request (SAR), Anna found officers’ attitudes towards her were similar to what we heard with Fiona in Bradford, blaming her abuse and injuries on “lifestyle choices of her own”.
Anna said: “Every time I look at my Subject Access Request, I still think it’s shocking.
“It was the same sort of terminology – lifestyle choices, liar, attention seeker, and the majority of it was negative.
“It was really rare that I’d come across something where they were actually listening or they were concerned.”
Humberside Police told us: “As the investigation is active, it is imperative we protect its integrity; as such are unable to comment on aspects of the investigation as this could impact or jeopardise any criminal or judicial proceedings.”
But it is years now since Anna first reported her abuse, and she believes the police have left it too late to gather evidence.
She told Sky News: “I think it’s either happening everywhere, or young people have been taken everywhere.
“I think the attitudes of the professionals, the police, social services, from what I’ve heard and seen, they seem very similar in every area.”
The government-commissioned rapid review by Baroness Casey is due to be published next week and is expected to call for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
Like Anna and Fiona, many victims will welcome Sir Keir Starmer’s early response accepting the recommendation.
They will want the inquiry to probe into the operations of the perpetrators – who they are and how they are connected.
But they will also want clear accountability of the people and organisations who failed to act when they reported their abuse – and an understanding of why, so often, authorities fail to protect these vulnerable girls.
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