The Role of Natural Gas in a Low-Carbon Europe: Infrastructure and Supply Security

Franziska Holz, Philipp Richter () and Rudolf Egging-Bratseth

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2016, vol. 37, issue SI37, 33-59

Abstract: In this paper, we analyse infrastructure needs of the European natural gas market in response to decarbonisation of the European energy system. To this end, we use numerical modelling and apply the Global Gas Model. We investigate three pathways of future natural gas consumption: i) a decreasing natural gas consumption, following the scenarios of the EU Energy Roadmap 2050; ii) a moderate increase of natural gas consumption, along the lines of the IEA's New Policies Scenario; and iii) a temporary increase of natural gas use as a "bridge" technology, followed by a strong decrease after 2030. Our results show that current import infrastructure and intra-European transit capacity are sufficient to accommodate future import needs in all scenarios. This is despite a pronounced reduction of domestic production and a strong increase in import dependency. However, due to strong demand in Asia, Europe must increasingly rely on exports from Africa and the Caspian region, leading to new infrastructure capacity from these regions. When natural gas serves as a "bridge" technology, short-term utilisation rates of LNG import capacity temporarily increase instead of instigating large scale pipeline expansions.

Keywords: Natural gas; Europe; Decarbonisation; Infrastructure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q35 Q38 Q41 Q42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/214193/1/s ... 5102015_Preprint.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Role of Natural Gas in a Low-Carbon Europe: Infrastructure and Supply Security (2016)
Journal Article: The Role of Natural Gas in a Low-Carbon Europe: Infrastructure and Supply Security (2016)
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:zbw:espost:214193

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().