“Not yet at the end of its troubles,” Europe risks running out of gas for the winter of 2023-24, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned on Thursday, which is urging governments to “act immediately” to boost demand in particular to reduce.
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“We are sounding the alarm for European governments and the European Commission for the next year: we believe Europe must take action now to avoid the risks of gas shortages in 2023-2024,” said AIE Director Fatih Birol , while opening an online conference with some journalists.
About 30 billion cubic meters of gas could actually be missing in 2023, in the event of a complete halt to supplies from Russia, but also due to the economic recovery of China, which would absorb a large part of liquefied natural gas (LNG). , according to calculations by the agency set up by the OECD in 1974 to advise countries on energy issues.
According to Mr Birol, European reserves would then only be 65% full by the start of the 2023-2024 winter, compared to 95% today.
Beware of “overconfidence”
“The ‘cushion’ provided by current reserve levels, combined with the recent drop in gas prices and unusually warm temperatures, should not lead to overly optimistic conclusions going forward,” warns the IEA, which indicates that in the summer of 2023 the global Geopolitical and economic conditions for raising and filling reserves should have changed significantly compared to 2022.
Filling the reserves this summer has benefited from “key factors that may not be repeated in 2023,” she adds.
Starting with the position of Russia, whose gas pipelines delivered near-normal volumes in the first half of this year before shipments slowed amid the war in Ukraine. After all, the country is supposed to deliver around 60 billion m3 to the European Union by 2022. Which will be “highly unlikely” in 2023, the IEA notes, noting that Russian supplies could even be halted altogether.
In addition, China’s lower LNG requirements this year have facilitated European purchases. Global LNG production needs to increase, but only by 20 billion m3, and if Chinese imports return to 2021 levels in 2023, they would absorb most of that growth, estimates this analysis, titled “Never too early to start looking.” prepare for the winter of 2023-24”.
With prices softening this autumn and demand limited by mild weather, “there is a risk of overconfidence creeping in on the issue of gas supplies to Europe. But we’re still a long way from the end of it,” commented Mr. Birol.
immediate measures
Governments must therefore “take immediate action to accelerate energy efficiency, the use of renewable energies, heat pumps and all other means of structurally reducing gas demand,” stresses the economist, who also mentions “in some countries” the prolongation of nuclear power plants.
According to him, the unprecedented increase in wind and solar energy in Europe in 2022 will have enabled the region to avoid consuming 15 billion m3 of gas.
“Until now, the growth of renewable energy has been driven by the fight against climate change; but this year the main reason for this record growth was energy security,” he notes.
So by how much should Europe reduce its gas needs to be quiet?
“This year (in 2022), we estimate that gas demand will have fallen by 11% compared to 2021, or around 45 billion m3,” replies before the end of the summer, Mr Birol, who is due to meet with government officials on Friday “to ring the alarm bell”.
The agency plans to publish shortly “a roadmap” and propose a list of those concrete measures that “would allow the reserves to be filled to 95% at the beginning of the 2023-24 heating season and structurally reduce gas consumption”, even more so against the background of still high prices.