The Precarious State of Europe
The European Union countries are highly dependent on natural gas because of “restriction on CO2 emission, the nuclear phase-out announced by some member states, high-emission from coal based generation, and obstacle to rapid development of renewables generation.” Natural gas constituted 21.4% of the primary energy consumption. It peaked in 2010 when it reached 25.4%.
Traditionally, the European Union has been a main driver of the demand increase in natural gas from the early 1990s. Consumption of natural gas by Europe constituted 27.8% of total global consumption, even though this represents a decrease from the 36.7% in 2005, which can be explained largely by the growing global natural gas market.
The European Union meets the overwhelming of its natural gas demand by importing. However, the European commission expects that the import dependence will increase to 84% of total gas demand by 2030 (Piebalgs, 2009). This is mainly because indigenous gas production will be decreasing unceasingly until 2030. Projecting the future energy demand in Europe depends on “continued economic growth of more than 2% per annum, hardly any rise in population, oil prices remaining at high level, gas prices determined by market forces, increased environmental awareness in politics and among consumers, growing trends to save energy and improving energy efficiency.” Because of these factors, import dependency and the role that Russia plays, energy security had become a hot topic. In order to to lessen the dependency on Russian natural gas, Liquefied Natural Gas served as an opportunity as it’s a fast growing sector of the world gas market and a possible gas source for Europe since it is capable of being shipped across the world. We will evaluate if the European has succeeded in reducing the dependency on Russia and improve its energy security.