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Hello and welcome to the program.

They say the best thing for most people to do to help Ukraine

is turn down the heating by a degree to reduce the money heading to Russia in return for gas.

Well, if you didn't want to do that for Ukraine, the gas price is more than encouraging you to do it anyway.

And of course, the gas is used in electricity and then, of course, don't get started on petrol and diesel prices.

It should be said, the shock was underway before the war.

So today we thought we'd take a close look at what is happening and where the pain is being felt.

And our first guest is Michael Lewis, Chief Executive Officer of Eon, UK.

Michael, let's just ask first of all, what is happening?

Well, as you said, Evan, this crisis actually goes back to the last summer.

When we started to see gas prices rising, the gas price,

the international wholesale gas price, which we are tied to, means that the electricity price also

rises because gas-fired power generation sets the marginal price of power. So what we saw is an

unprecedented increase at the end of last year in both gas

and power prices. And clearly that ultimately feeds through into both consumer and business

prices. How badly are we affected by this energy price shock relative to other countries?

I mean, the gas price generally speaking, I mean, it does vary from market to market,

as you've said, but the gas price clearly has gone up for all key countries in the European

Union and the UK. The extent to which that impacts consumer prices depends on their

dependence on gas as a fuel for heating. And in the UK, we do have a comprehensive

network of natural gas. You know, most houses are connected to the natural gas network,

...