Cold flats, citizen solidarity, martial law, and the rise of decentralized power. That’s the fictitious review of the 2022 energy crisis.

Editor’s Note: Of course, the energy crisis is to be taken seriously, but nothing happens from disseminating gloomy news alone. Therefore, this article is a fictitious retrospective on the energy crisis of 2022 as seen from the year 2025.

Summer 2022: The Gloomy News

We are suffering from a huge heat wave in the summer of 2022, which is depleting our hydroelectric reservoirs.

Nuclear plants in France are under maintenance.

The Russians will stop the flow of gas in winter 2022/2023.

A power shortage in Europe will result.

It’s going to be a lockdown without Netflix.

Governments and authorities are duly unprepared for such a scenario.

Fall 2022: Cold Flat Refugees

After an unusually hot summer, temperatures fell rapidly in November 2022. Skies were clear but bitter cold, neither rain nor snowfall was in sight. This further depleted the hydroelectric dams, and due to the low sun solar power production was reduced to rubble.

Putin knew how to play his cards. The flow of Russian gas into Western Europe came to a halt on November 12th, as a retaliation for the continuous flow of Western arms into Ukraine.

Governments scrambled and activated their crisis management teams to deal with an upcoming power shortage. First, they ordered industrial energy guzzlers to reduce their energy. While this was a needed shock for all those companies who didn’t care about energy efficiency up to now, it quickly became clear that restricting industrial energy guzzlers wasn’t enough to get us through the winter. Especially since the majority of industrial companies were operating very energy efficiently already at that time.

In an audacious move, similar to the first lockdowns of 2020, governments decided on November 28th to cut the flow of gas to private households to safeguard industrial production.

Millions of flats went cold. Millions of people couldn’t cook any longer.

The preppers decided that SHTF now grabbed their bug-out bags and went to their bug-out locations.

But the large majority of people weren’t preppers, and they realized they needed to do something to get through the winter because it was only the end of November.

Then, something unexpected happened. People remembered the solidarity with Ukrainian refugees earlier that year. Those who had homes heated by oil, wood, or thermal heat offered shelter to those who lived in gas-heated flats. In contrast to sheltering Ukrainian refugees, it was pretty clear that cold-flat refugees would surely return to their flats once the temperatures would rise in spring.

Those long winter nights of 2022/2023 resembled the narratives of our grandparents: sitting together in the living room, singing, playing cards, and telling stories.

Spring 2023: WWII Style Mobilization Efforts

During winter, governments were so busy keeping the lights on and industrial output up that they didn’t think about anything longer-term than March 2023. Private households seemed to have arranged themselves, and as long as there wasn’t any unrest, governments focused on the stability of the electricity grid.

When the light at the end of that winter tunnel was finally visible, governments deactivated the crisis management teams. But they realized that major investments in the energy infrastructure were needed urgently.

Similar to the mobilization efforts at the start of WWII, a whole range of ambitious large energy infrastructure projects were launched: hydroelectric dams, power-to-gas installations, wind parks, and large-scale photovoltaic installations in sunny mountain flanks and along highways. Just like in wartime, VAT was doubled on an emergency bill to pay for all those projects. State coffers were empty in 2023 after the stabilization efforts during the pandemic.

Even after the stern winter of 2022/2023, some people were still living in the past. Some environmental organizations started blocking the ambitious energy infrastructure projects that had just started. Governments reacted by declaring martial law, ignoring complaints and objections by the argument of national security.

And that was the moment when small-scale, decentralized energy projects got off the ground, too. Homeowners realized that nobody could object to their solar panel or small wind turbine installation in times of martial law.

Because communities have found together again during those dark and cold winter months, decentralized energy projects were often realized on a neighborhood level — without any permits, just by the initiative of the citizens who still felt the hardships of the past winter in their bones.

Fall 2023: Cold Flat Refugees, Reloaded

Despite all the efforts seen over the past summer, none of the large-scale energy infrastructure projects was completed before fall arrived again. However, some of the small and decentralized projects could be completed over the summer by ambitious citizens. Because the internet never died over the entire period, knowledge sharing about those projects in blogs and social media spread like wildfire, with more and more decentralized projects taking shape.

Nevertheless, especially those living in gas-heated city flats still required asylum in other homes during the winter of 2023/2024. But both people and governments were already used to this, so it was implemented without any hectic.

In contrast to winter 2022/2023, the long evenings were not spent playing cards and telling stories anymore, but sharing knowledge and skills about decentralized energy projects. It was a wartime effort.

Spring 2024: The Smart Grid

As soon as the sun came out again, people would return to their homes and start working on the decentralized energy projects they prepared over the winter. In contrast to 2023, now also tenants started installing little solar installations and wind turbines in their rented flats. Cables along the facades from one flat to the other became a common sight in urban areas.

Governments realized that they had completely lost the overview of who was producing how much electricity and when, and sharing it with whom. They also realized that all the decentralized power production could have an impact on the sizing of their large energy infrastructure projects.

Martial law was still active. So governments enforced the smart grid by sending out new electricity meters to every single household. These new counters were no longer 4-quadrant, but 8-quadrant: They could count how much energy you take from the grid, how much energy you feed into the grid, how much energy you take from your neighbors, and how much energy you feed to your neighbors. Furthermore, they were equipped with SIM cards so that both utility companies and private households could gather data in real time.

Governments realized that the installation of these new electricity meters needed to be fast, so the new meter was delivered with installation instructions for the savvy. At the same time, all concession regulations were waived, and the un-savvy could claim back the installation costs from their taxation form.

Fall 2024: Return To Normal

By now, the first large-scale energy infrastructures have gone into operation, and more and more homes covered at least part of their energy requirements through decentralized production.

Still, some people living in cold flats required shelter in warm homes over the winter months. But most people spent their winters in their own homes, optimizing their decentralized energy installations together with their neighbors.

Spring 2025: End of Martial Law

After three winters in difficult conditions, the energy landscape of Western Europe looked fundamentally different, and governments decided to end martial law.

What stayed behind was a pragmatic first step towards a smart grid, ample data about energy production and consumption, and lots of waived regulations.

People exited the energy crisis mentally strengthened because they learned that they could do something about the energy shortage.

After getting rid of foreign gas, people started thinking about repeating the efforts to get rid of foreign oil.

After three cold winters, they were finally done with energy-producing autocrats.