Balancing supply security and decarbonization: Optimizing Germany’s LNG port infrastructure under the European Green Deal

Per J. Agrell, Henri Dehaybe and Manuel Herrera Rodriguez

Energy Policy, 2025, vol. 198, issue C

Abstract: The European Green Deal depends on a coordinated common policy for demand, renewable generation, supply security, and infrastructure. To ensure supply security after 2022 gas supply interruptions, the German government diversified energy imports into liquefied natural gas (LNG) through the use of floating storage and regasification units (FSRU). We test whether the current plan for Germany is consistent with the Green Deal objectives for decarbonization. We use a cost-minimizing facility location model following European policy objectives, combined with a network flow model, to optimize the assignment of FSRUs among German ports to ensure gas supply. Six scenarios are investigated: three greenfield models, with different demand scenarios, in which all locations are possible, a brownfield model in which the existing terminals are imposed, a no-FSRU scenario and a peace scenario between Ukraine and Russia. The optimal solutions for the base greenfield scenarios use the FSRU port infrastructures to expand the regasification capacity to 45 bcm per year. The model validates actual current decisions as optimal for supply security, but the two greenfield and long-term decisions differ in length and investment intensity, challenging policy consistency. Potentially, the impact of anticipatory hydrogen transport investments can distort the analysis.

Keywords: Liquefied natural gas; Floating storage and regasification units; Facility location; German ports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421524005044
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:198:y:2025:i:c:s0301421524005044

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114484

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().