Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. We've made it to Wednesday in September 7th. I'm Nailoudu.

Here's what we're following today. Could zero-down mortgages close the racial home ownership gap?

Plus, the California power grid struggles against more extreme heat. But first, today's one big

thing. Russia pushes European energy to the brink.

Russia has stopped all gas flow to Europe. The Nord Stream pipeline has been a key source of

natural gas for decades, providing heat and electricity across the region. And the result of

Russia's actions are already being felt keenly in Europe even before the cold weather sets in.

The Euro has plunged to a 20-year low against the dollar. The UK's new Prime Minister's biggest

first task is to help British households with their energy bills. And France is calling for

voluntary cuts of 10% in energy usage or warning it may need to start rationing.

Axios's markets correspondent, Matt Phillips, is here to explain what exactly is going on. Hey, Matt.

Hey, Nail. How are you doing? Matt, I guess the big question is, can Europe survive this winter

without Russian gas? They're going to have to find out through some combination of cutting

demand, capping prices, bailing out their various utilities. Germany is the most dependent because

it gets most of its gas from Russia. Germany is Europe's biggest economy. It has an industrial

sector where large parts have been engineered basically along the premise of rushing gas,

being cheap and abundant for the foreseeable future. So this is a huge shock to the way

its economy has been structured over the last few decades. What about other countries?

Well, UK is an interesting one. They are more reliant on natural gas as part of their energy mix

than Germany is. They don't have as much storage capacity as the Germans do. And so they're really

being forced to ride the market price, which is wreaking havoc. The main regulator of British

energy markets for consumers, they've estimated that they could see prices rise as much as 80 percent

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