The EU Channels Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and It Won't Go Well

At a time when European energy-producing companies need as much capital as they can get to invest in increased production to offset Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to cut natural gas supplies, the European Union is proposing to … wait for it … take $140 billion of energy-producers’ capital and give it to consumers to offset record high energy prices.
 
The Wall Street Journal explains:
 
“In these times it is wrong to receive extraordinary, record revenues and profits benefiting from war and on the back of our consumers,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday. She said the money captured from companies’ inflated profits and revenue should be channeled to those who need it most, such as households and small businesses.
 
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said it almost exactly that same way. Here’s how she described the need for a windfall profits tax on oil companies in a bill she introduced last March.
 
“While Putin's war is causing gas prices to go up, Big Oil companies are raking in record profits. We need to curb profiteering by Big Oil and provide relief to Americans at the gas pump — that starts with ensuring these corporations pay a price when they price gouge, and using the revenue to help American families,” said Senator Warren. 
 
So, if profits are taken away from energy-producing companies—and renewable energy companies are included in the EU proposal if their profits are high enough, which they don’t appear to be—what are the companies supposed to use to expand production?
 
The EU solons believe the companies will still have plenty of money. “A cap [on earnings] at that level would allow producers to cover their costs and should not be a barrier to investment in new capacity, according to the commission,” writes the Journal.
 
Good to know. Who better than politicians and bureaucrats to determine how much money energy producers need to expand production? These would be the same people who were going to ensure EU countries had cheap, clean energy for decades by pushing renewable energy investment—and quietly relying on Russia to fill the sizable energy gap.
 
Now it becomes more obvious why the EU is in this mess. The politicians who didn’t have the foresight to see that relying on Putin for a major share of their energy also don’t have the foresight to see the problem with their windfall profits tax proposal.