Plenty: chemical plants, steel plants, glass plants - most energy hungry factories and plants were closing all 2022 and are still closing up until now in Europe.

Just one example: https://cen.acs.org/business/finance/BASF-cutting-back-main-...

But it's never mentioned in such oh-so-wonderful super-objective democratic example of western journalism as this Economist article, LOL.

The western journalism started to hit the lowest bar set by third-world countries in the last 10-15 years. Or maybe it always was the same propaganda, I just never paid attention and blindly believed it until around 2008-2011.

The article you linked is also an example of "spinning" things to make them sound worse than they are: "They are now prompting BASF to lay off thousands of workers and shut down sections of its flagship facility in Ludwigshafen, Germany" - the "thousands of workers" (actually 2600, just enough to qualify as "thousands") are worldwide, in Ludwigshafen itself it's 700 (according to https://www.chemietechnik.de/service-standorte/basf-schliess... - actually the number of 700 is also mentioned at the very end of the c&en article).

One "example" is not data.

BASF is moving some production to China, but even that seems to be a bad decision now with the breakdown of trust with the authoritarian countries pushing for a multi-polar world.

Germany is in bed with China in the same way it was in bed with Russia, and you can see how that went.

"But it's never mentioned in such oh-so-wonderful super-objective democratic example of western journalism as this Economist article, LOL.

The western journalism started to hit the lowest bar set by third-world countries in the last 10-15 years. Or maybe it always was the same propaganda, I just never paid attention and blindly believed it until around 2008-2011."

This has very strong "old man yells at clouds" energy. So where does such an incredibly enlightened person such as yourself get news from?

In France, one glassmaker stopped production: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/french-glassmaker-duralex-st...

Another manufacturer of food-related products closed, too: https://www.europe1.fr/economie/le-groupe-cofigeo-william-sa...

A quick search brings up others, but in French.

It says they stopped for four months, not permanently and definitely didn’t move to the USA

"Four months" means the winter, right? So, it must have helped with "lowering winter consumption".

Fair point about moving to the US, though.

Highest gas prices were in August, not winter.

That's correct, but the TFA is about how Europe cut energy consumption this winter.

I think the reason is twofold:

1. Industries can probably not afford to cut production immediately

2. At least in France, there were worries about gas availability for the winter. The government tried to have industries lower their consumption to not run out of the reserves during the winter.

that's anecdotal at best, not data. Finding links on the internet is not enough to identify a trend.

The French national gas distribution company was talking about a significant reduction in industry consumption of 23% compared to 2018-2019 (to exclude covid), even when adjusted for weather.

https://www.grtgaz.com/en/en/our-actions/continuity-of-gas-t...

I haven't found a similar source for electricity, though articles I've seen talk of reductions, too.

Well, the government asked them to consume less so some reduction is expected.

The part of the claim you have taken upon yourself to substantiate is that the reduction is mainly (or even mostly) due to industry getting closed down completely or relocated specifically to the US.

Largest Polish producer on fertilizers (Azoty S.A.) completely stopped prouction during summer and autumn last year due to absurdly high gas prices.

Temporary measures for a time when gas cost 10x more than now.