Natural gas is used to make fertilizer. Natural gas prices are high because countries are shutting down coal, oil and nuke power plants, and trying to depend on intermittent solar and wind power, backed up by generators using natural gas. When the sun don't shine, and the wind don't blow, the natural gas must flow. This happened in the later part of 2021 and caused natural gas prices to spike.
I read news sites in the UK, NL and Ireland and their energy prices are skyrocketing. One of the countries was talking about a 39% price increase for power. The UK had over two dozen power companies go bankrupt because they are not allowed to charge the customer enough to cover the increased cost of natural gas. Farmers in all three countries are worried about fertilizer prices as they are in the US. Higher fertilizer prices are going to mean higher food costs across the board. Lets not even talk the higher costs of diesel. One country was already removing some taxes on road fuel to try to lower fuel prices.
One of the countries has been pushing to better insulate structures to lower energy usage and cost. The problem is that the cost of many of the suggestions will take many decades to have a payoff. One was over 70 years to a pay off.

Me thinks those long term payoffs means those energy saving measures are not going to get down.
One of the surprises to me, was that before Putin's War, natural gas prices were so high that both UK plants that make fertilizer from natural gas shutdown. They simply could not afford the price of natural gas. The UK government is now having to subsidize the operations of the plants. The surprise, besides only two plants in the UK, was that these same plants also make CO2, and CO2 is used to slaughter livestock. No CO2, no slaughtering of livestock, and thus no meat in the stores. The livestock producers would end up having to kill the animals that they could not afford to keep, and burn/bury them some where on their land, simply because their was no CO2 to process the animals due to high natural gas prices.... Who would have thunk it? Well, not the policy makers....
If Putin's War is not ended real soon now, these higher food prices are going to cause instability in some/many countries. Egypt is very likely, as is Turkey, and others. Turkey's economy was all but destroyed before Putin's War. Turkey gets quite a few tourists from Russia, as well as food from Russia and Ukraine, so things are going to get much, much worse in Turkey if Putin's War continues. Poeple in Turkey were already lining up for free/subsidized bread before Putin's War. Then they had huge wild fires that took out quite a bit of food production last year. Turkey is going to really suffer if food prices stay high as will other places in the world. That turmoil is likely to move outside it's borders...
Later,
Dan