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If this was happening before Covid then I would agree. However post COVID I think this will not be such a problem. There are numbers of things that governments can do to decrease energy demand. They government offices, schools etc. can move into online mode again to save on heating, they can even motivate businesses to do the same. Governments can shutdown certain energy intensive industries temporarily like Aluminum production offering subsidies. They can close "nonessential" things like ski resorts - especially those which require energy intensive artificial snow.
Of course there will be considerable damage especially when it comes to competitiveness of manufacturing industry with certain countries that have energy independence. But if we lived through COVID we will get through this.
Arguably this will lead to higher costs. Home heating tends to be inefficient. So sending everyone home to keep warm will likely result in higher costs. And it's not like you can just turn off all the energy to government offices and schools. You're going to have to keep them above freezing throughout the winter.
Usually, during the workday, energy use at home drops. And that's without considering that most people don't turn down the heat. If energy prices are high, everyone is going to be locking that dial when they leave home.
By keeping schools, offices, and basically any place where people congregate, open and warm, you're going to see people turn down their thermostats and spend more time in public places, making it even more efficient.
Basically locking people down during an energy crisis is going to lead to increased demand for stuff to do at home, and supply is limited. That's going to push up prices even further.
They should be creating communal areas where people can gather, stay warm, hang out, and even eat. Commercial kitchens are far more efficient than residential ones. Restaurants are getting priced out by energy costs, but then we're just going to end up with more people eating at home, which means more energy consumption.
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I don't understand how moving things online saves energy. Now instead of heating 25 kids in one classroom, you have 25 kids in 25 bedrooms with the heater on. Same goes for basically any office space.
We have "survived" covid in large parts because all fiscal constraints were forgotten for 2 years and all Western governments engaged in massive scale money printing to stop any social unrest. This is of course not really possible anymore, as there is already massive inflation. "Close everything and pay people to do nothing" might seriously lead to empty shelves and worthless paper money this time.
Meanwhile the virus itself didn't put any actual constraints on healthy young/middle aged people (the demographic that does almost all the work) to go out and do actual physical work. Governments mostly just told them to put on a mask and continue with their jobs. Not having energy and materials on the other hand cannot be solved in such manners.
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Which is the worrying slogan I expect to see repeated (and added to) over the years.. the fact that governments can now expect people to tolerate and even support extreme interventions rather than call for the metaphorical heads of the decision makers who got them here is a precedent I didn't expect to become relevant so soon.
Would the EU countries have been as confident in endangering their energy supply if they weren't also confident that it would be tolerated? Will the policies which lead to an over reliance on Russia be overturned and the advocates discredited, or will the same wartime fervour we saw in the pandemic ensure that only bad people ask those kinds of questions?
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