Business
Three Years After Ukraine Invasion, Europe Still Deals With Energy Crisis
At a newly built dock along Germany’s Elbe River, tankers from the United States unload liquefied natural gas to fuel factories and homes. In central Spain, a forest of wind turbines planted atop mountains helps power the energy grid. In French government buildings, thermostats have been lowered in winter to save electricity.
In the three years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ignited an energy crisis across Europe, the continent has transformed how it generates and stores power. Russian natural gas, long Europe’s energy lifeline, has been replaced with other sources, notably liquefied natural gas from the United States. Wind and solar power generation has leaped around 50 percent since 2021. New nuclear power plants are being planned across the continent.
But Europe’s energy security remains fragile. The region produces far less natural gas than it consumes and is still largely dependent on other countries, especially the United States, to help keep the lights on. Natural gas, which drives the price of electricity, is roughly four times as expensive as in the United States. High energy costs have strained households and forced factories to close, weakening Europe’s economy.
A dependence on Russia
The 2022 invasion of Ukraine revealed Europe’s dependence on energy from Russia, especially natural gas, which accounts for around 20 percent of Europe’s energy consumption.
“The energy appeared cheap, but it exposed us to blackmail,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, told the World Economic Forum last month.
Prices soared in 2022 on worries that Russia would completely cut off gas flows into Europe as well as other factors. Countries banded together to share fuel and other energy sources, and build or modify infrastructure to transport it. These efforts are forecast to have reduced Europe’s reliance on Russian gas to 8 percent of supplies in 2025, from 35 percent in 2021, according to Anna Galtsova, an analyst at S&P Global Commodity Insights, a research firm.
Norway is now the largest supplier of gas, mainly through a web of pipelines. But Russia has become a large supplier of liquefied natural gas, second only to the United States in 2024.
And Europe has become better at directing the energy to where it is needed, creating “a tremendous amount of flexibility that Europe didn’t have on the eve of the war,” said Anatol Feygin, chief commercial officer at Cheniere Energy, a large American L.N.G. exporter.
Helping that pivot were programs that encouraged households and government buildings to lower thermostats to 19 degrees Celsius (66 degrees Fahrenheit). Factories across Europe also curbed production to avoid blistering energy bills. Other initiatives, like having stores shut off lights early in the evening, have been rolled out.
Renewable energy solutions
Europe built more renewable energy projects to help bridge the gap. Before Russia’s invasion, around a third of Europe’s power generation came from renewable energy, propelled by a buildup of wind and solar power. In 2024, wind and solar farms generated more electrical power than fossil fuels for the first time, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.
“That is a big change, and that speaks to the additional policy push to get alternative sources of energy into the system,” said Tim Gould, chief energy economist at the International Energy Agency in Paris.
But shifting to renewable energy is costly. Although overall energy prices have declined from their 2022 peaks, both gas and electricity tariffs remain elevated. Renewable sources like wind and solar have made great progress, but much investment is still needed to fill in the gaps in periods of low wind and sun.
Large polluters like steel makers have said Europe is not doing enough to foster a shift to greener operations. “European policy, energy and market environments have not moved in a favorable direction,” ArcelorMittal, Europe’s largest steel company, said in November.
Global competition for gas
The largest alternative to gas piped in from Russia by far has been liquefied natural gas, but it is a relatively expensive option. With gas vital for industry, heating and power generation, the shift away from Russian supplies has been difficult.
Europe is at the mercy of global markets, bidding against the likes of China and South Korea for liquefied natural gas. Prices have recently soared to the highest level in a year, hurting businesses and adding to a cost-of-living crisis in Europe.
The largest source of liquefied natural gas has been the United States, mostly terminals from the Gulf Coast, which provide nearly half of Europe’s supply. Europe has seen a boom in setting up terminals to receive L.N.G., especially in Germany, which had none before the energy crisis.
During a cold snap in January, several American tankers carrying liquefied natural gas to Asia changed course for Europe, where they could make a bigger profit, said Natasha Fielding, head of European gas pricing at Argus Media, a London research firm.
“Europe has made really remarkable strides,” said David L. Goldwyn, who was a State Department energy envoy during the Clinton and Obama administrations. “But when the weather turns cold and competition from Asia for L.N.G. increases, the situation looks more challenging.”
Gas prices remain high
Natural gas prices in Europe have fallen from the punishing highs of 2022, but in 2024, they were still double their five-year average before the war, according to the International Energy Agency.
Although imports of Russian gas through Europe’s pipelines have plummeted, Europe has expanded its purchases of liquefied natural gas from Russia, which arrives via port. There has not been enough time to develop new resources like L.N.G. to compensate for the loss of Russian gas.
The ebbs and flows of L.N.G. are largely determined by market forces. President Trump has pushed Europe to import more fuel from the United States, and Ms. von der Leyen has suggested that L.N.G. from the United States could replace Russian fuel.
Some level of additional gas exports to Europe from Russia could be included as a sweetener for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to agree to a settlement in Ukraine, analysts say. “That would be a serious negative for U.S. energy exporters,” Mr. Goldwyn said.
The cost of the energy crisis
Exorbitant gas costs contributed to soaring inflation and led factories that employed thousands in Europe to close or relocate to countries with cheaper energy.
Some of the biggest European names are trimming their operations. The German chemical giant BASF said it would close some production at its site in Ludwigshafen near the border with France, while making the largest foreign investment in its history in China, where energy is up to two-thirds cheaper than in Europe.
High natural gas prices have translated into higher costs for making ammonia, a crucial component in fertilizers. Yara International, a fertilizer giant based in Norway, is stopping ammonia production at its plant in Tertre, Belgium, potentially leading to more than 100 job losses. “High energy prices are a huge challenge for European competitiveness,” a spokeswoman said.
The energy crisis has also led to a painful cost-of-living crisis for families across Europe. Energy poverty has jumped in Europe, with nearly 10 percent of the population reporting that it is unable to keep its homes warm, and larger numbers of households falling behind on paying their energy bills.
“We’ve created a state of energy precariousness,” said Niki Vouzas, spokeswoman for the National Federation of Rural Families in France. “People are heating their house less, and filling up the gas tank less.”
An uphill battle
Recent months have brought renewed signs of market unease. The colder weather has caused Europe to draw down the levels of storage it builds up for the winter at a faster rate than the previous year, leading to worries that rebuilding these stocks over the summer may be expensive.
“The challenge will be this summer to replenish the reserves ahead of the following winter,” Ms. Fielding of Argus said.
Despite the premium prices of recent years, Europe’s overall gas production has declined. Higher taxes have deterred investment in the British North Sea while the Netherlands is shutting the once prolific Groningen field after production triggered earthquakes. Domestic output in the European Union and Britain amounted to less than 20 percent of consumption in 2024, S&P Global Commodity Insights estimates.
Austria’s OMV is one of the rare companies aiming to increase gas production in Europe. The only way to make Europe’s energy costs competitive with other regions like the United States “is to increase supplies of gas” said Alfred Stern, OMV’s chief executive.
“We are past peak crisis,” said Michael Stoppard, global gas strategy lead at S&P Global Commodity Insights. “But we are not out of the woods.”
The sale of Warner Bros. — whether in pieces to Netflix or in its entirety to Paramount — is stirring mounting worries among Hollywood union leaders about the possible fallout for their members.
Unions representing writers, directors, actors and crew workers have voiced growing concerns that further consolidation in the media industry will reduce competition, potentially causing studios to pay less for content, and make it more difficult for people to find work.
“We’ve seen this movie before, and we know how it ends,” said Michele Mulroney, president of the Writers Guild of America West. “There are lots of promises made that one plus one is going to equal three. But it’s very hard to envision how two behemoths, for example, Warner Bros. and Netflix … can keep up the level of output they currently have.”
Last week, Netflix announced it agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and TV studio, Burbank lot, HBO and HBO Max for $27.75 a share, or $72 billion. It also agreed to take on more than $10 billion of Warner Bros.’ debt. But Paramount, whose previous offers were rebuffed by Warner Bros., has appealed directly to shareholders with an alternative bid to buy all of the company for about $78 billion.
Paramount said it will have more than $6 billion in cuts over three years, while also saying the combined companies will release at least 30 movies a year. Netflix said it expects its deal will have $2 billion to $3 billion in cost cuts.
Those cuts are expected to trigger thousands of layoffs across Hollywood, which has already been squeezed by the flight of production overseas and a contraction in the once booming TV business.
Mulroney said that employment for WGA writers in episodic television is down as much as 40% when comparing the 2023-2024 writing season to 2022-2023.
Executives from both companies have said their deals would benefit creative talent and consumers.
But Hollywood union leaders are skeptical.
“We can hear the generalizations all day long, but it doesn’t really mean anything unless it’s on paper, and we just don’t know if these companies are even prepared to make promises in writing,” said Lindsay Dougherty, Teamsters at-large vice president and principal officer for Local 399, which represents drivers, location managers and casting directors.
Dougherty said the Teamsters have been engaged with both Netflix and Paramount, seeking commitments to keep filming in Los Angeles.
“We have a lot of members that are struggling to find work, or haven’t really worked in the last year or so,” Dougherty said.
Mulroney said her union has concerns about both bids, either by Netflix or Paramount.
“We don’t think the merger is inevitable,” Mulroney said. “We think there’s an opportunity to push back here.”
If Netflix were to buy Warner Bros.’ TV and film businesses, Mulroney said that could further undermine the theatrical business.
“It’s hard to imagine them fully embracing theatrical exhibition,” Mulroney said. “The exhibition business has been struggling to get back on its feet ever since the pandemic, so a move like this could really be existential.”
But the Writers Guild also has issues with Paramount’s bid, Mulroney said, noting that it would put Paramount-owned CBS News and CNN under the same parent company.
“We have censorship concerns,” Mulroney said. “We saw issues around [Stephen] Colbert and [Jimmy] Kimmel. We’re concerned about what the news would look like under single ownership here.”
That question was made more salient this week after President Trump, who has for years harshly criticized CNN’s hosts and news coverage, said he believes CNN should be sold.
The worries come as some unions’ major studio contracts, including the DGA, WGA and performers guild SAG-AFTRA, are set to expire next year. Two years ago, writers and actors went on a prolonged strike to push for more AI protections and better wages and benefits.
The Directors Guild of America and performers union SAG-AFTRA have voiced similar objections to the pending media consolidation.
“A deal that is in the interest of SAG-AFTRA members and all other workers in the entertainment industry must result in more creation and more production, not less,” the union said.
SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said the union has been in discussions with both Paramount and Netflix.
“It is as yet unclear what path forward is going to best protect the legacy that Warner Brothers presents, and that’s something that we’re very actively investigating right now,” he said.
It’s not clear, however, how much influence the unions will have in the outcome.
“They just don’t have a seat at the ultimate decision making table,” said David Smith, a professor of economics at the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School. “I expect their primary involvement could be through creating more awareness of potential challenges with a merger and potentially more regulatory scrutiny … I think that’s what they’re attempting to do.”
Businessman Brian Kahn has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud in a case that brought down a hedge fund, helped lead to the bankruptcy of a retailer and damaged West Los Angeles investment bank B. Riley Financial.
Kahn, 52, admitted in a Trenton, N.J., federal court Wednesday to hiding trading losses that brought down Prophecy Asset Management in 2020. The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged the losses exceeded $400 million.
An investor lawsuit has accused Kahn of funneling some of the fund’s money to Franchise Group, a Delaware retail holding company assembled by the investor that owned Vitamin Shoppe, Pet Supplies Plus and other chains.
B. Riley provided $600 million through debt it raised to finance a $2.8-billion management buyout led by Kahn in 2023. It also took a 31% stake in the company and lent Kahn’s investment fund $201 million, largely secured with shares of Franchise Group.
Kahn had done deals with B. Riley co-founder Bryant Riley before partnering with the L.A. businessman on Franchise Group.
However, the buyout didn’t work out amid fallout from the hedge fund scandal and slowing sales at the retailers. Franchise Group filed for bankruptcy in November 2024. A slimmed-down version of the company emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
B. Riley has disclosed in regulatory filings that the firm and Riley have received SEC subpoenas regarding its dealings with Kahn, Franchise group and other matters.
Riley, 58, the firm’s chairman and co-chief executive, has denied knowledge of wrongdoing, and an outside law firm reached the same conclusion.
The failed deal led to huge losses at the financial services firm that pummeled B. Riley’s stock, which had approached $90 in 2021. Shares were trading Friday at $3.98.
The company has marked down its Franchise Group investment, and has spent the last year or so paring debt through refinancing, selling off parts of its business and other steps, including closing offices.
The company announced last month it is changing its name to BRC Group Holdings in January. It did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
At Wednesday’s plea hearing, Assistant U.S. Atty. Kelly Lyons said that Kahn conspired to “defraud dozens of investors who had invested approximately $360 million” through “lies, deception, misleading statements and material omissions.”
U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp released Kahn on a $100,000 bond and set an April 2 sentencing date. He faces up to five years in prison. Kahn, his lawyer and Lyons declined to comment after the hearing.
Kahn is the third Prophecy official charged over the hedge fund’s collapse. Two other executives, John Hughes and Jeffrey Spotts, have also been charged.
Hughes pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors. Spotts pleaded not guilty and faces trial next year. The two men and Kahn also have been sued by the SEC over the Prophecy collapse.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
Chatty bots are sharing their hot takes through hundreds of thousands of AI-generated podcasts. And the invasion has just begun.
Though their banter can be a bit banal, the AI podcasters’ confidence and research are now arguably better than most people’s.
“We’ve just begun to cross the threshold of voice AI being pretty much indistinguishable from human,” said Alan Cowen, chief executive of Hume AI, a startup specializing in voice technology. “We’re seeing creators use it in all kinds of ways.”
AI can make podcasts sound better and cost less, industry insiders say, but the growing swarm of new competitors entering an already crowded market is disrupting the industry.
Some podcasters are pushing back, requesting restrictions. Others are already cloning their voices and handing over their podcasts to AI bots.
Popular podcast host Steven Bartlett has used an AI clone to launch a new kind of content aimed at the 13 million followers of his podcast “Diary of a CEO.” On YouTube, his clone narrates “100 CEOs With Steven Bartlett,” which adds AI-generated animation to Bartlett’s cloned voice to tell the life stories of entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Richard Branson.
Erica Mandy, the Redondo Beach-based host of the daily news podcast called “The Newsworthy,” let an AI voice fill in for her earlier this year after she lost her voice from laryngitis and her backup host bailed out.
She fed her script into a text-to-speech model and selected a female AI voice from ElevenLabs to speak for her.
“I still recorded the show with my very hoarse voice, but then put the AI voice over that, telling the audience from the very beginning, I’m sick,” Mandy said.
Mandy had previously used ElevenLabs for its voice isolation feature, which uses AI to remove ambient noise from interviews.
Her chatbot host elicited mixed responses from listeners. Some asked if she was OK. One fan said she should never do it again. Most weren’t sure what to think.
“A lot of people were like, ‘That was weird,’” Mandy said.
In podcasting, many listeners feel strong bonds to hosts they listen to regularly. The slow encroachment of AI voices for one-off episodes, canned ad reads, sentence replacement in postproduction or translation into multiple languages has sparked anger as well as curiosity from both creators and consumers of the content.
Augmenting or replacing host reads with AI is perceived by many as a breach of trust and as trivializing the human connection listeners have with hosts, said Megan Lazovick, vice president of Edison Research, a podcast research company.
Jason Saldanha of PRX, a podcast network that represents human creators such as Ezra Klein, said the tsunami of AI podcasts won’t attract premium ad rates.
“Adding more podcasts in a tyranny of choice environment is not great,” he said. “I’m not interested in devaluing premium.”
Still, platforms such as YouTube and Spotify have introduced features for creators to clone their voice and translate their content into multiple languages to increase reach and revenue. A new generation of voice cloning companies, many with operations in California, offers better emotion, tone, pacing and overall voice quality.
Hume AI, which is based in New York but has a big research team in California, raised $50 million last year and has tens of thousands of creators using its software to generate audiobooks, podcasts, films, voice-overs for videos and dialogue generation in video games.
“We focus our platform on being able to edit content so that you can take in postproduction an existing podcast and regenerate a sentence in the same voice, with the same prosody or emotional intonation using instant cloning,” said company CEO Cowen.
Some are using the tech to carpet-bomb the market with content.
Los Angeles podcasting studio Inception Point AI has produced its 200,000 podcast episodes, accounting for 1% of all podcasts published on the internet, according to CEO Jeanine Wright.
The podcasts are so cheap to make that they can focus on tiny topics, like local weather, small sports teams, gardening and other niche subjects.
Instead of a studio searching for a specific “hit” podcast idea, it takes just $1 to produce an episode so that they can be profitable with just 25 people listening.
“That means most of the stuff that we make, we have really an unlimited amount of experimentation and creative freedom for what we want to do,” Wright said.
One of its popular synthetic hosts is Vivian Steele, an AI celebrity gossip columnist with a sassy voice and a sharp tongue. “I am indeed AI-powered — which means I’ve got receipts older than your grandmother’s jewelry box, and a memory sharper than a stiletto heel on marble. No forgetting, no forgiving, and definitely no filter,” the AI discloses itself at the start of the podcast.
“We’ve kind of molded her more towards what the audience wants,” said Katie Brown, chief content officer at Inception Point, who helps design the personalities of the AI podcasters.
Inception Point has built a roster of more than 100 AI personalities whose characteristics, voices and likenesses are crafted for podcast audiences. Its AI hosts include Clare Delish, a cooking guidance expert, and garden enthusiast Nigel Thistledown.
The technology also makes it easy to get podcasts up quickly. Inception has found some success with flash biographies posted promptly in connection to people in the news. It uses AI software to spot a trending personality and create two episodes, complete with promo art and a trailer.
When Charlie Kirk was shot, its AI immediately created two shows called “Charlie Kirk Death” and “Charlie Kirk Manhunt” as a part of the biography series.
“We were able to create all of that content, each with different angles, pulling from different news sources, and we were able to get that content up within an hour,” Wright said.
Speed is key when it comes to breaking news, so its AI podcasts reached the top of some charts.
“Our content was coming up, really dominating the list of what people were searching for,” she said.
Across Apple and Spotify, Inception Point podcasts have now garnered 400,000 subscribers.
Justice Dept. sues Nevada over voter rolls
Hudson, NH Police arrest four following drug trafficking investigation
Nemec Out, As Wounded Devils Host Ducks | PREVIEW | New Jersey Devils
Anthony, NM man sentenced to prison, sold meth from parents’ property
Expectations for North Carolina Against USC Upstate
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Inside Minnesota’s $1B fraud: fake offices, phony firms and a scandal hiding in plain sight
Residents emerge in DR Congo’s tense Uvira after M23 rebel takeover
What to know about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release from immigration custody
Republican House leader signals plan to begin contempt proceedings against Bill and Hillary Clinton
Three years on, former MEP Kaili remains in limbo still awaiting trial
-
Alaska7 days agoHowling Mat-Su winds leave thousands without power
-
Texas1 week agoTexas Tech football vs BYU live updates, start time, TV channel for Big 12 title
-
Ohio1 week agoWho do the Ohio State Buckeyes hire as the next offensive coordinator?
-
Washington4 days agoLIVE UPDATES: Mudslide, road closures across Western Washington
-
Iowa6 days agoMatt Campbell reportedly bringing longtime Iowa State staffer to Penn State as 1st hire
-
Miami, FL6 days agoUrban Meyer, Brady Quinn get in heated exchange during Alabama, Notre Dame, Miami CFP discussion
-
Cleveland, OH6 days agoMan shot, killed at downtown Cleveland nightclub: EMS
-
World6 days ago
Chiefs’ offensive line woes deepen as Wanya Morris exits with knee injury against Texans
