When oil and gas prices spiked following disruption to energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz, Chris Bernkopf was already in the media explaining why, and more importantly, what needs to change in light of the ongoing energy crisis.
Podero’s CEO appeared on both BBC and LBC Radio in recent days, cutting through the noise with a clear-eyed analysis of Europe’s structural energy vulnerability. His message was consistent: this is not a new crisis. It is the same crisis, repeating itself, because the underlying conditions have not changed.
Why is Europe so exposed to energy price volatility?
This is the second major energy price shock in four years. The source is different from 2022, but the exposure is identical. Fossil fuels are priced on a global market. When supply tightens anywhere, every buyer competes for the same reduced pool, and Europe has no special protection from that dynamic.
As Chris Bernkopf, CEO of Podero, explained in a BBC interview last week: “When energy prices rise, as we see with oil and gas, this has a knock-on effect on electricity prices, because gas still sets the price of energy.”
Businesses feel that immediately, and households follow.
What makes this moment even more striking is that it’s not unprecedented. The same structural exposures keep surfacing: dependence on imported fuels, limited storage, and a power market where international gas pricing sets the marginal cost of local electricity.
The cost of not addressing these matters keeps compounding with every crisis.
Renewables and smart storage: breaking the cycle
The energy transition is often purely framed as a climate story. But it is also an energy security story, and a cost story.
Domestically produced renewable energy cannot be embargoed. It does not depend on shipping lanes or geopolitical stability in producing regions. Once built, it carries near-zero marginal cost, structurally immune to the volatility that fossil fuel markets routinely produce.
The challenge is intermittency. Wind and solar reached 30% of EU electricity generation in 2025, overtaking fossil fuels for the first time on record. And yet gas still sets the marginal price of electricity for much of the day. But that challenge is being solved.
Bernkopf on the BBC again: “It’s very important that we also add energy storage to that system, so that we can cover those times when we do have to rely on gas, more and more by batteries, but of course also by private households.”
Combining household and large battery orchestrated storage with stronger grid interconnection tech is a huge part of the solution; one that is already in deployment today. Spain is instructive. Sustained investment in renewables over the past decade has left the country structurally less exposed to gas price shocks than most of its European neighbours. That resilience was a policy choice, and it is paying off.
The path to European energy independence.
Crises have a way of clarifying what matters. As Bernkopf noted in a discussion on LBC: “Every time that Europe is reminded that levers like that exist, this brings back into discussion independence, not just from a climate perspective, but from a security perspective too, and especially from a price perspective, which every consumer cares about.”
The levers for change are well understood: faster deployment of wind and solar, permitting reform, grid investment, and scaling demand-side, automated flexibility: smart systems, batteries, and heat pumps that reduce reliance on gas at peak times. The technology exists and the economics already favour the transition in most cases. What’s needed is consistent, committed and accelerating implementation.
The current crisis is a reminder that the cost of inaction is not abstract. It shows up in rising residential energy bills, reduced commercial margins, and national inflation forecasts. Every year of delay doesn’t just extend the timeline, it raises the price of catching up.
Find the full LBC Radio discussion on YT.
Podero’s platform enables utilities to steer residential devices like heat pumps, EV chargers, and home batteries against electricity markets, so that stored energy can be dispatched when it is needed most. Scaled to fleet level, helping gas play a diminishing role in setting the price.
