Russia’s war idles some European mills as energy costs soar

At current prices, it costs 1,250 euros a day to run boats out of Fiumicino, leaving little room for profits after plying the sea for cod, sea bass, sea bream, octopus, squid and shrimp, said Pasquale Di Bartolomeo, who runs one of 22 boats out of the port near Rome.

Restaurants, he said, will make do with frozen seafood or farm-raised fish. He hopes the prices ease so he can return to work.

“The family needs to eat, there are expenses,’’ Di Bartolomeo said.

Italy decreased its gas consumption from 2010 to 2014, thanks to the addition of subsidized wind and solar power, but reliance on natural gas pushed back up again in recent years as it took polluting coal power plants offline.

They have been substituted mostly by natural gas as renewables stalled, partly because of Italy’s infamous bureaucracy that has kept many investors away, said Matteo Di Castelnuovo, an energy economist at Milan’s Bocconi University.

“Italy clearly underestimated the problem of increasing its gas consumption the last few years, and with that, its dependence on Russian gas,’’ he said.

The government has pledged to simplify red tape, and this week approved six new wind parks that will produce more than 400 megawatts of energy. Energy transition minister Roberto Cingolani has floated the idea of next-generation nuclear to a reluctant population.