EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: The world may be careening toward a 1970s-style energy crisis – or worse.
Current and former energy officials tell CNN they worry that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the wake of years of underinvestment in the energy sector have sent the world careening into a crisis that will rival or even exceed the oil crises of the 1970s and early 1980s.
Unlike those infamous episodes, this one is not contained to oil.
“Now we have an oil crisis, a gas crisis and an electricity crisis at the same time,” Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency watchdog group, told Der Spiegel in an interview published this week. “This energy crisis is much bigger than the oil crises of the 1970s and 1980s. And it will probably last longer.”
Left unsaid: Underinvestment is largely due to overregulation and government-fueled expectations about levels of “renewable” energy production that never materialized.