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.