As energy prices broke a new record this week, analysts are now concerned about potential ‘rolling blackouts’ that could hit Europe this winter.

The Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Swiss commodity giant Trafigura Jeremy Weir discussed with the Financial Times the challenges and the economic strain impacting the energy market as a result of the power crunch over Europe and Asia: “If you look at the European situation, just look what’s happened, we had a light winter in Europe, not great renewable power generation over the summer period.

“We don’t have enough gas at the moment, quite frankly. We are not storing for the winter period, so there’s a real concern, potential if we have a cold winter, we could have rolling blackouts in Europe. That’s a problem.

In an interview that was broadcast yesterday by the FT Commodities Asia Summit, Mr Weir added: “What we have to understand is that with this energy transition we are using coal at the moment, obviously want to phase out coal on a long-term basis, but we need to understand that we need to have power in developed and the emerging markets as well though this transition process.”