Comment by mike_hearn

Energy is expensive in Germany not because of gas itself but because of the Energiewende combined with reliance on Russian gas. This comes largely from Europe's refusal to use fracking and insistence on lots of wind and solar, which are expensive and unreliable. The UK has gas deposits it could frack, for instance, but refuses to do so because they believe (wrongly in my view) that this would end the world.

Of course they can compete with China. China is rather resource poor for such a big country and has to import lots of its fuel. Energy is cheap(ish) in China because it is willing to use all available energy sources without net zero ideology.