Energy

Europe must slash gas demand before hard winter, IEA warns

The European Commission will this week tell member states to start cutting their gas use immediately and will upgrade the EU’s emergency supply status to “alert”

The EU on Wednesday is planning a set of urgent actions across the entire economy - including reductions to heating and cooling use and some market-based measures - to mitigate the impact of a possible gas supply cut-off by Russia. Picture: Getty

Europe needs to drastically slash natural gas consumption in the next few months to prepare for what is likely to be “a long, hard winter”, the head of the International Energy Agency said.

While the European Union has made some progress diversifying away from key supplier Russia, any shipments from the country remain highly uncertain, with a complete cut-off not ruled out, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a commentary outlining steps Europe must ...