When the war in Ukraine began on Feb. 24, prices for key energy commodities such as oil and natural gas were already on the rise as demand and overall economic activity increasingly picked up from the lulls connected to the COVID-19 pandemic.The invasion went on to send prices sky high in the following days as the market speculated about the consequences of war involving Russia, a leading producer and exporter of oil and natural gas.
The war and ensuing price spikes drove the U.S., European Union, and other allies to more aggressively go about charting an exit from energy trade partnerships with Russia, the EU's top external supplier of fossil fuels. The price volatility and intent to stop paying Russia for energy are reorienting global markets to a tremendous degree. It has shaken up plans among the greenest of countries in Europe to gradually cut fossil fuels out of their energy mixes in favor of renewable sources, driving them instead to burn more coal in the short term to get through winter and approve new gas infrastructure — activities they'd sought to phase out.
President Joe Biden intervened over the summer, using trade emergency power to protect the solar products subject to the Commerce investigation from duties for a two-year period.