Its not as simple as that.
In the UK, energy costs have multiplied by 10 times in three months. As in, all energy has risen 10,000% in three months.
So imagine your electricity bill was $150 in june, this month it will be $1500. What are you going to do, not use electricity? Get a different electricity provider? The overwhelming majority of people cant afford $1500 a month electricity bills. What are they supposed to do? Their system, similar to ours in the states, is a state-sanctioned utility and you only have your one provider of electricity and natural gas.
The bigger issue is a two fold matter, which everyone, including us to a point, are really dealing with and now people are finally protesting them:
#1 The insane "green energy" policies many industrialized nations have adopted over the last decade which have driven energy costs to the moon and outsourced the majority of their domestic energy production to foreign countries. Europe used to do all their own natural gas and coal production. Its all been forced out to Russia, almost like a real world NIMBY-ism. Which then leads into the second issue.
#2 The prolonging and antagonization of a party to an unnecessary war in Ukraine. Russia and the Ukraine were ready for a peace deal in June and Boris Johnson personally made the Ukraine pull out of the deal. Russia literally supplies almost all the natural gas to Europe, which he has now shut off to pressure the EU into doing what they want. And its working.
The profit angle is a non-starter, energy companies in the EU, just like in the USA, pull much less profits per unit of measurement than what is being taxed.
