Here is table from Sunday which also shows the total gas stored in each country, along with the capacity ("Working volume"), annual consumption, and injection / withdrawal capacities:
The UK has 35Mtpa LNG port capacity and spain has 44Mtpa which is more than the rest put together though (Germany has 0!), so it probably balances out in terms of screwedness.
The UK also produces about half of it natural gas.
Each country has differing reliance on natural gas too. The UK is particularly reliant, for example.
Only the Netherlands looks well prepared - 8.8Mtpa of LNG import capacity, 120TWh of storage and a relatively small population.
Somebody should make a model of country per country screwedness that takes all of this into account.
According to a recent Lord's debate the UK only has 5 days supply at peak demand, but are planning to re-open a mothballed storage facility to double this. As the UK gets 45% of its gas from its own domestic resources, the gas fields can be considered a huge gas storage facility.
Historically, the UK has not had much gas storage capacity (even Rough wasn't that big) because gas wells have a reasonable amount of turndown capacity and those wells are directly coupled through St Fergus and other sites into gas cleaning and then into the national gas grid.
Germany has never had significant gas production and is heavily gas dependent so has built up storage facilities for strategic reasons.
The mistake made was that since 2004, the UK has become a gas importer with a greater fraction of imports every year. There was then a series of judgements made by successive governments that:
1) Gas was only a bridge fuel from which the UK would move away over time
2) The UK network is also essentially directly coupled into the Norwegian gas system which is and was massive
3) The UK has proportionately a very large amount of LNG terminal capacity
Therefore it was decided that it was not necessary either to develop more storage capacity nor indeed to pay for the re-completion of Rough in order to keep it operating. This now seems to have been a serious error.
This is particularly true because:
1) The UK, like The Netherlands, is almost entirely gas heated, Germany is also heavily gas dependent but heating mixes vary across European countries by a lot more than most people appreciate. This is because the UK and The Netherlands discovered gas early and gas is a brilliant heating fuel (apart from the whole global warming thing...). Norway, which discovered gas in large quantities only after it had already built hydro infrastructure and invested in electric heating, doesn't use much gas for heating domestically.
2) The UK has a lot of renewables and very little hydro and has therefore developed over the last decade into a gas + renewables electrical grid and closed its coal power plants. The great wave of nuclear AGR shutdowns has barely started but the Magnoxes are mostly offline already. Other European countries have kept their coal plants around either in daily use or on standby and are therefore able to bring them back. The GB grid simply doesn't have much idled but non-demolished coal capacity left on it.
3) Although, unlike most EU power markets, the GB electricity market is not pure "energy only" and has a capacity market, like those markets, electricity is priced at the marginal cost which in most hours is set by gas generation.
So the UK gets a double whammy of gas price effects.
All models and predictions will be based on assumptions, for example, there is a movement to not pay bills.
What if the people not paying decide that, since they are not paying, they might as well use as much as possible?
All it would take is a charismatic populist to come along and to promote such a thing for any reserves to be gone.
I am not sure that having LNG ports makes much difference if you have a minor currency such as Sterling and you have to just print more of it to pay for LNG. Other customers might have a manufacturing base or lots of gold, which would trump paper money.
On the topic of AGSI, the company I work for published a Python client to work with their API in case you're interested: https://github.com/ROITI-Ltd/alsi-py
Edit: Correction, it's for ALSI, not AGSI, sorry about that. We should add AGSI now that the API is available.
To make it even better it would be useful to have the stored amount per capita and also number of days the country can rely on stored amount. Although I understand the usage will heavily depend on the weather and how far the country will go in restricting the usage of gas reserves (for example, shutting down various production sectors).
Most EU countries do not have LNG terminals FYI it's not something that magically appears by itself. Germany has already slowed down approvals for other construction projects due to construction supply-chain issues.
Yeah, good point. So another point would also be listing ability to replenish the reserves (availability of LNG terminals and other negotiated supply solutions).
That would be a very useless data, as gas consumption depends on the price. And the price is at a historic high, so we simply don't know what that means.
German Grid regulator BNetzA created forecasts based on historic consumption and assumed savings. But right now we have storage level way above even the most wildly optimistic scenario. This forcast is so hard i don't think it has any merit.
You can have a look at the AGSI+ [1], they list a Stock/Consuption ratio as 22%. But this number is IHMO meaningless, as it does not mean all is well for 22% of a year = 78 days, and than everything collapses.
Sorry, but what you write nonsense and incoherent.
>What utter nonsense, of course historical trends are important, we've had high prices before.
Not remotely as high as we have had. Drawing conclusions from price elasticity at 25€ to price elasticity at 300€ is nothing but pure speculations.
>. Also many companies would normally hedge the prices, after all large factories and power stations don't just shutdown because of price fluctuations.
Made up financial instruments are useless when the counterparty simply does not fullfill their contracts. Right now we care about actual prices, for actual, physical delivery.
>The problem we have now is that the idiotic policies of EU governments will make the price essentially infinite because there will be no f'ing gas.
Conterpoint: The price is not infinite. What's happening with the infinite money glitch for buying gas for storage is that the price of the scarcity in the winter was priced in since this spring. Spreading out a scarcity event to something longer and less serve gives markets time to adjust. There is nothing idiotic about this, it's pure common sense.
>This year is massively exceptional
Yes, that's my point, why forecasts do not make much sense.
>aforementioned strategic leadership from the governments but we've had plenty of "normal" years to draw consumption trends from.
And what's your point? Is the not exceptional and we can make forecasts, or is it infinite? Your post
is completely incoherent and does not make any sense.
Typical statistics that tells exactly nothing. If country A has 10 liters gas storage and it is 100% full and country B has 10 000 gas storage 50% full? Who is in a better shape? Hard to say, still - maybe country A uses 5 liters a year and country B 10 000 000 liters a year? Or vice versa. What if country A has long term LPG purchase deals to gasport (like Poland does) and does not have to pay spot price, etc.
Guys behind this clicks farm claim to "Telling data-driven stories about politics, climate, economics, and more.", but they tell no story, I would not trust them.
I think this would be a lot more useful if it showed the capacity. Our problem in the UK isn't keeping our reserves at capacity, it's that they're tiny.
Also what does Daily Trend mean here? I thought it'd be the percentage change since yesterday, but the UK having a negative daily trend and being at 100% now wouldn't work with that.
> I think this would be a lot more useful if it showed the capacity. Our problem in the UK isn't keeping our reserves at capacity, it's that they're tiny.
You are right. Check the "Stock/Consumption %" column here: https://agsi.gie.eu/ (choose the correct UK)
The UK (post-Brexit) currently has 1.2% of yearly capacity stored, and reserves are at 100%
I wonder what the UK gas reserves are for? Demand smoothing?
Thanks, that source has a lot more data! The Stock / Consumption field is especially interesting for comparison. The UK's largest gas storage plant closed in 2017 (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-stor...), AFAIK there's been no effort to replace it since then. Not sure why it's been kept so low though.
Ukraine is at 28.4%, that probably speaks how much reserve storage they have. After the war it will be important location for Azerbaijan gas transit (via Georgia and Black Sea). The pipeline will take some time to build, but it will make it more likely that they eventually join the EU and NATO as well.
> Poland and Hungary, two countries which should never have been allowed to join and are currently causing the union a lot of issues
May I know why exactly these two countries should not be allowed to join EU? Because they cause issues? I mean, every country causes some issues. In the current context Germany and its former government lobbying for Russian gas causes issues of perhaps much larger scale. Tell me about corruption.
> Because they cause issues? I mean, every country causes some issues.
Both Hungary and Poland have been consistently undermining the rule of law for years. Hungary has also started going after freedom of expression and minority rights and let’s not talk about the anti-gay laws for which the European Commission is suing them. The only reason they haven’t been stripped of their voting rights in the EU (the harshest sanction available) is that the unanimity of the other members is required and they shield each other. It’s a disgrace.
Do note the timeline. Up to 2015 the governments of Poland were largely liberal.
The current ruling party's conservative coalition from 2005 collapsed under its own weight in two years.
You're judging the whole situation through the lens of the actions of a single political party, which came into power only because as liberal as liberals might be, they were sort of okay with having a sizeable disenfranchised minority in the country.
Hungarian and Polish mores are far away from what the EU is standing for, the eastern you go the more conservatives the mores are. Nothing wrong with that in itself, sovereign nations can do and think whatever they wish inside their own borders. The problem is that you can't build unity when people have widely different opinions on such basic things, especially when you need unanimity to do anything.
Joining the EU shouldn't only be about getting free money to rebuild your decrepit infrastructure and fund your local mafias. Lots of countries were accepted for purely strategic reason (ie. we prefer them with US than with Russia or China)
Outside Poland the social conservatism in Eastern Europe has very little to do with religion. Russia and Hungary are full of irreligious/atheist people with some rather controversial views on minorities and LGBT people.
I missed that they finally ratified it _the 18th of July 2022_. It’s not like they had a choice. It was a prerequisite to them getting candidate status for the EU adhesion. I’m glade this is starting to bring positive change to the country.
> Outside Poland the social conservatism in Eastern Europe has very little to do with religion.
The majority in the Rada refused to ratify in 2016 because they thought the use of the world gender and the way sexual orientation was presented went against the country Christian values. See this Euractiv article at the time for more details: https://www.euractiv.com/section/europe-s-east/news/ukraine-...
Have you ever been to any of the mentioned countries or spoken with people from there, or is your opinion based on what you hear and see as an outsider?
I've been to Macedonia, Poland and Hungary and I agree with everything said and implied about those countries in the GP.
It is not necessary to travel to Poland or Hungary to be aware that the populist governments of these countries have embraced conspiratorialism, anti-semitism,
anti-ziganism, revisionism, homophobia, while openly disregarding liberal institutions such as the separation of church and state, independence of the judiciary, freedom of expression, pluralism. You can simply listen to what people from those countries who do embrace the liberal values associated with the EU project have said about their home countries.
I agree with almost everything you wrote, but I can totally understand not being fond of gypsies. Throughout the Balkans their compounds are hives of criminality, guns and drugs, and that is not because they are discriminated against.
They are incredibly closed and conservative (in their own ways) societies, against any form of integration and modernisation, while at the same time leeching off any benefits the host states provide them (healthcare, benefits, infrastructure) while not only providing nothing in return, but a negative effect.
Poland tries to accommodate backward/barbarian gypsie minorities in really weird/bad ways. There is actually a law that allows sex with minors .. if you are a gypsie, because those are your traditional religious ways:
"since they got married according to the law and tradition of their community, and then undertook voluntary sexual intercourse, which is even an element, which the Court also knows ex officio, confirming the effectiveness of the marriage"
It was ok to have sex with 14 year old child, because thats how you assert (illegal) marriage in this culture ...
Without necessarily agreeing with your characterisation, it can be true that achieving equality and plurality is difficult.
However, there is a big difference between a government which is trying to resolve social problems and lead the population towards a better settlement, and one which takes advantage of divisions to create fear and appeal to the worse sentiments of the majority.
> You can simply listen to what people from those countries who do embrace the liberal values associated with the EU project have said about their home countries.
Would you throw them under the bus just to keep the populists out of the Union?
Also now that apparently Sweden is going to have a populist right-wing government, should they leave the EU?
To be clear: I'm asking these questions to highlight the ridiculousness of looking at a whole country through the lens of their (temporary) government.
The point is not that they should be thrown out of the EU, but that the EU is now much more reluctant to allow another country with similar social and political problems to join.
I have indeed been to both Albania and Macedonia. Great countries, awesome people, I enjoyed my trip tremendously. But locals do indeed complain about corruption and the inefficiency of their government when you take with them. The issue with criminality and especially drug trafficking is also very much palpable in Albania.
His opinion is perfectly reasonable. Even without the war, Ukraine is extremely far from EU accession standards. It was very nearly a failed state in the early 2010s. Nobody West of the Elbe river wants to deal with yet another ultra-conservative and corrupt state, at least certainly not while veto powers exist.
> so what if they currently have issues, they will in time improve
Or they'll take EU cohesion funds to fuel cronyism and populism as their neighbours did.
People not familiar with Ukraine just do not realize how much Kremlin influence fueled corruption and criminal activities in the countries. Transnistria (Russian occupied territory in Moldova) is literally a criminal state, had huge impact on the the southern parts, ORDLO became the same in recent years. To the north Belarus is a dictatorship, not exactly the honest trade partner.
By your metric, the most "socially backward" country that joined the EU was the United Kingdom, as its the only one that actually exited so far.
EDIT: regarding your edit - yep, Ukraine is currently a very backwards and crappy country, basically no better than Russia. While Russia is propped up by infinite monies flowing from the ground, Ukraine doesn't have it, so it's much more dilapidated. It's a small miracle that it didn't collapse economically and became Putin's client, just as Belarus had before. However, the one huge difference is that Ukraine doesn't have centuries of imperialistic and autocractic traditions that define Russia - so, it's population is not excited about subjugating other nations, and is ok with democracy as a form of government.
Last time I checked the UK didn’t have to face widespread homophobic attacks conducted by groups advocating discrimination and violence, widespread gender-based violence, ineffective investigation of violence against journalists, impunity of police and issues relating to bringing torturers to justice. Because that was the reality in Ukraine before the war.
Considering the rest of your comment picturing Ukraine as some backwater (post)soviet hell hole: You've never been there. You've never even talked to someone from there.
I don't think that has anything to do with it. The UK is not at all normal socially though.
It's a very strange country, what its lack of respect for freedom of speech etcetera. It's been formalizing its authoritarian excesses and made them normal, and I get the impression that the British have gotten used to it and accept it as the way things should be.
I can't read Hungarian or Polish, so maybe I don't see these things, but I don't feel that Poles or Hungarians have internalized a view that they can't say what they mean in the way that I feel that the Brits have, so while you may be intending some kind of irony in your remark, Britain may in fact be the most backwards country, socially, in Europe.
The Brits seem to feel that punishment of people who are in the way, or inconvenient, or challenging the state is legitimate.
Yes, but surely freedom of speech, the right to protest etc. are much more basic than the stuff the Polish dislike?
As long as the Poles and Hungarians aren't arresting people willy-nilly for protesting or writing things on the internet then they're not even in the same league as the Brits when it comes to social regression.
> surely freedom of speech, the right to protest [are the fundamental determinants of social progression]
a) No, that's pretty arbitrary. Every country has limits on freedom of speech and expression, and they all draw the line in different places.
b) It is 100% not illegal to express an opinion that Charles isn't fit to be king, that the monarchy should be abolished and so on. No end of people saying just that on the radio, on the TV, in print, etc
c) Protest remains legal; there was a large protest about the shooting of Chris Kaba this weekend
d) Picketing funerals is considered a breach of the peace, and a public order offense
To use point D to claim the UK is the most socially backward country in Europe is to have spent faaaar too long online.
Surely however, democratic society has its foundation in these things.
Without freedom of speech, we don't a free formation of ideas in society, so there can be no legitimate elections. Without freedom to protest and to have political gatherings we don't have freedom to communicate ideas to people who don't see them, and then again, we don't have prerequisites for a functioning democracy
I think a) is very dubious-- even things like the 'crying fire in a crowded theater' are associated with suppression of speech that afterwards could be seen to be deeply illegitimate, so even the US assurances concerning free speech are likely to be much too weak.
With regard to b) people have despite this been arrested in the context of remarks such as 'fuck imperialism', similarly with regard to c), perfectly nonviolent protesters have been arrested, even charged.
d) is not relevant, for the context of at least these arrests and charges has been the proclamation of Charles as King and if the proclamation is mixed with the funeral, such an mixing of the ceremonies is outside of the control of those who wish to protest the proclamation.
You are now changing your argument from "Britain may in fact be the most backwards country, socially" to "Britain doesn't have a functioning democracy".
Every country on earth has forms of expression that aren't protected. I'm sorry you don't like that, but it doesn't make it any less true.
People have not been arrested because they said "fuck imperialism". Here, I'll say it now. Fuck Imperialism! There is zero chance I will get in any legal issue in the UK for this, and I also believe that you know this full well. Once more with feeling, fuck imperialism!
In the UK, as in almost every country, violence isn't the sole determinant of whether or not a protest is legal. In the US for example, the degree to which you obstruct traffic is important to the legality of your protest.
To, me democracy is something social and at the core of the social functioning of a country. However, these things are prerequisites for democracy, they are not democracy itself and are much more connected to social progress than democracy itself.
That some countries go further than the UK does not change how to view what has been aid.
People have been arrested because of a placard where the offensive element was the word 'fuck' in the sentence 'Fuck imperialism' near an event relating to the proclamation of Charles as King. It has been a major story and has been decried as illegitimate by the British press. Indeed, there is a case of a lawyer being threatened with arrest after expressing the intent to write 'Not my King' on it (https://metro.co.uk/2022/09/13/man-threatened-with-arrest-if...).
Your last remark is not relevant, because such things have not been alleged in any of these cases.
Those numbers ARE ABSOLUTELY WORHTLESS. "capacity filled in percent" is a WORTHLESS METRIC that tells the lay reader NOTHING at all.
Austria might have a max capacity of 60% of their yearly demand, Germany might have 200% (made up numbers for illustration). In that case with full capacity, Austria could survive 4 months, while Germany could go two years. Yes, this disregards cross-country sharing, but even averaged across different countries, percentage means nothing. It doesn't tell us anything. The one and only question is: "How long can we go without new gas?" and percentage values don't answer it.
Capacity should be displayed either in average-demand days or a timeframe (= How many days could we satisfy demand with our stored gas alone?).
The answer to your question "How long can we go without new gas?" would be a meaningless metric if not accompanied with a large amount of qualification.
What is meant by "without new gas"? Without LNG shipments? Without local/European produced NG? Or just without Russian NG imports? Without any imports?
What does it mean "to go"? To consume at some historical rate? Consumption varies with NG prices - recently consumption has been curtailed as a result of high NG prices. At a macro scale, NG consumption has been falling. Europe-wide annual consumption is about 20% less than it was 10 years ago.
And an unqualified time answer - say one month, for example - would be meaningless as the rate of gas consumption is highly seasonal at various scales (daily, weekly, annually). A winter month is not equal to a summer month for example.
I guess that could all be calculated and presented and give us an idea. The looming threat is Russia not giving us any of their gas now, other sources are "safe", so I guess that's the baseline: How long can we go without Russian gas?
> And an unqualified time answer - say one month, for example - would be meaningless as the rate of gas consumption is highly seasonal at various scales (daily, weekly, annually). A winter month is not equal to a summer month for example.
That's why I discerned between "average consumption days" and "timeframe from now on / day x on".
Russia has shut down pretty much all of their supplies, and here we are, filling the storage for the winter. Storage levels are average.
That's probably about as close as you can get to having an idea. You might also have a look at the graphs at bruegel, but that wont help all that much.
What's rarely mentioned is that many European countries have massive reserves of recoverable shale gas but have banned fracking and are thus depending on imported gas...
That's one of the reasons the US are cashing in right now while Europe is having an "energy crisis".
Currently in EU renewable energy is practically 40%.
So there is zero point in digging holes in the ground. They can easily buy the rest and quickly grow renewable energy share (basically what they are doing now).
Europe is heavily dependent on gas, as the current situation painfully shows. It seems very premature to claim that there is "zero point digging holes in the ground" and odd to claim that they can "easily buy the rest" when energy costs are currently at crisis level.
The point is that 'digging holes in the ground' isn't inherently more secure than making sure that you can import fuel from other countries.
Both involve a certain amount of risk and uncertainty. Both require preparation and planning, and some degree of subordination of other national interests.
This is perhaps one of the lessons of the Ukraine conflict - Russia is still exporting gas to Germany and Germany is still importing it, despite diplomatic relations between the two countries being at a nadir. It's simply not in either country's interest not to carry on with the commercial relationship.
It would be interesting to know the end game here.
If the Ukrainian war ends, I assume that isn't the end of it. I assume the taps from Russia will turn back on, but it has shown itself to be an unreliable supply.
I think Russian bet is that Europe would take 3-7 years to shift dependence away from Russian gas and that in the mean time a lack of access to cheap energy will lead to economic collapse, which will ultimately make the shift even harder. Putin is not testing our resolve but our ability.
I suspect the goal is also also to trigger conflicts between EU member nations over energy scarcity. E.g. Germany has enough gas to last Germany for the winter so it prioritizes Germany and throws Lithuania under the bus so Lithuania lashes out, etc. A short term scarcity will lead to long term fractures - maybe even EU exits.
Meanwhile, this opens the door for politicians who will make peace with Russia and bring the gas taps back online and revive a sputtering economy - a role that Orban seems to be trying to fill pre-emptively.
I don't know when countries typically shift from economic conflict to kinetic conflict, but I hope that Russian intelligence isn't dumb/arrogant enough to assume that transition has zero probability.
Up to Russian invasion this February: old oil furnaces were being avidly replaced with natural gas ones. Solar installations were starting to slack off. Lots of re-roofing and new exterior wall insulation.
Since then: no slacking in the roofing and exterior wall insulation, but now everyone has a keen interest in heat pumps, and solar panels are being installed everywhere.
Gonna be hard to convince people to take their chances again with a fuel from such an unreliable source in the next few years, I think, especially if this is a bad winter and rationing happens.
Few people want to plan ahead (and spend the money that goes along with being prepared)... until they are in trouble.
I won't say that good things have come from this war, but it certainly is a wake-up call for countries to get their future plans in better order.
There is simply no excuse for the most industrially advanced country in the world (Germany) to have slacked off so much when it comes to energy. It must be some political angle, because not too many years ago Germany was one of the leaders in expanding their renewable energy sources.
> Since then: no slacking in the roofing and exterior wall insulation, but now everyone has a keen interest in heat pumps, and solar panels are being installed everywhere.
France here... Seeing how things were turning in May I turned my open fireplace into a closed one (way better efficiency) and ordered metric shit-tons of dry wood (I've now got enough for at least two years). Thankfully my house ain't using natural gas at all so at least I'm dodging that one problem. Now electricity may be rationed this winter: dunno, we'll see. But at least I won't be dying of cold.
Heating oneself burning wood has this advantage that it's stone-agey enough: chop a tree into smaller pieces, let them dry for a year, you can heat now heat your house during winter.
And nobody can "ration" me / prevent me from putting wood in the fireplace: that's the "stone age" part of it. The main french electricity company, on the other hand, is ran by state apparatchiks and if they decided to ration electricity (because, by "chance", half of the nuclear reactors are all simultaneously down), I'm pretty much sorry out of luck.
Overall I'm pretty disappointed by the EU (I'm an EU citizen) and plan to GTFO. I tried last year but it failed (residency was hard to obtain where I tried to go) but I'll very probably try again.
> because, by "chance", half of the nuclear reactors are all simultaneously down
What do you mean with the quotes? It's not by chance, it's due to backlogged maintenance (due to Covid) and some corrosion issues in a few reactors. The plan is to have all maintenance over before the winter.
EDF is certainly run by state apparatchiks, but it's hard to argue that they haven't done a pretty good job making electricity available cheaply and plentifully to French consumers.
EDF is mostly doing a good job especially considering how the EU competition regulation hinders them but they seriously screwed up with the nuclear power stations maintenance situation.
I'm currently renovating a house. My government are offering subsidies if you disconnect your gas supply and go all-electric. We'll be doing that alongside full solar (possibly with battery) and heat-pumps for heating/cooling.
Be careful though: there are regions in the EU where electricity prices went crazy up. I know people who had a fixed plan at 120 EUR / month from an electricity company that went belly up who needed to take a new plan. My brother went from 120 EUR / month to 400 EUR / month for his electricity bill. Sister-in-law got 6 K EUR year-on-year adjustment for her electricity bill (so 500 EUR more per month on average). And a friend, for a big house granted, went from 120 EUR / month to 800 EUR / month.
Hopefully the end game will be to see this as an opportunity to do something against climate change and lower the gas consumption permanently. I doubt that will happen though.
Me too. A flagging economy would make capital investments in green energy even more difficult. If China decides to sanction us we will also lose access to most of the underpriced green energy. A flagging economy, no gas and skyrocketing solar panel/wind turbine prices will mean a lot more coal.
Europe didnt make enough hay while the sun was shining.
Why? The current trend is to work hard in order to reduce any form of business with Russia that would help them to rebuild the army and become a threat again.
I assume that turning the taps back on would be seen as a short-term thing in order to fill storages and avoid short-term economic/humanitarian domestic issues. There's surely no country left left in the EU that considers Russia to be a tolerable long-term trading partner, except maybe for Hungary.
>but it has shown itself to be an unreliable supply
Russia is using gas to try and keep Europe out of the conflict. Once the war ends that ceases to be a motivator. Thus I assume they will turn the taps back on. That doesn't mean we want to rely on it which is the whole point of the question. Victory in Ukraine doesn't end this, so what's the end game. Is there going to be a further push for renewables? Gas from other sources? What's the time frames?
> Russia is using gas to try and keep Europe out of the conflict.
But it's not working, is it? Practically the whole Europe is helping Ukraine, sending weapons and everything we can to help.
It's not the question of how much gas Russia offers, it's the question of how much Europe is willing to take from them. Russia's status is very close to North Korea now - it's just unethical to make business with a state that got mentally stuck in XIX century and still thinks killing innocent people to grab more land is a good strategy.
I assume countries in the EU will no longer eschew longer gas contracts in favor of the spot market. The contracts have always been available and you might not have much faith in Russia any more but Europes second largest gas provider, Norway is still here. It's only a matter of making the choice.
This is going to be an "at your own risk" thing. If a country wants to build its economy around energy supplies from a regime that has shown it can and will use the energy tap as leverage and as a weapon, don't run crying back to mommy. I think everyone understands that.
There is an emergency plan being executed and expedited to reduce total gas demand by 30%, which just happens to be the amount Europe imports.
With half of that 15% this winter.
Not all reduction of consumption decreases output. For example, leaks could be plugged, insulation can be improved, more efficient machines could be used.
Also, not all output is equal, not does all output have to be done at a fixed time. Heating homes has to be done during winter, but some factories can postpone production a few months to wait for more favourable circumstances.
Furthermore, it's only a reduction in a few energy sources that are required, with gas being the most important. Other sources could be used to compensate to an extent. We're seeing some gas power plants moving back to coal for example. Not great for carbon emissions, but it has more and more flexible sources.
If you look at the current plans in most countries, they're largely about reducing waste and excessive usage. I mean... you could consider not being allowed to heat your private swimming pool "impoverishment", but probably only if you were comically wealthy and entitled.
(I'm actually a little surprised just _how_ un-aggressive the plans generally are.)
Really hoping to see power2gas facilities scale up. Gas storage seems like the most credible solution for stable, season-scale, grid-scale energy storage. Of course there are large conversion inefficiencies in a chain like wind->electricity->electrolysis->hydrogen->CCGT, but that’s where massive overbuilding of renewable generation capacity comes in.
The UK is aiming to have 50GW of wind capacity by 2030. It needs at least 300GW to decarbonize and ensure energy security.
Gee, it looks like that if we don't sell anything (but with this gov you never know) we (as in Netherlands) might be dodging the proverbial bullet this winter.
But I am personally counting on the fact that this gov will fuck up as usual ... always plan for the worst, then it can only be better...
This is strange, everything I heard is that Germany is in trouble with the gas situation but here it seems they have the most stored gas? Is this correct in content and meaning?
Lots of European countries are having trouble with gas, Germany was (IMHO) singled out due to being content about their situation of being reliant on russia (see NS2) before the invasion.
They also have the largest population, produce no gas, have no LNG import capacity and have a bunch of industries built around cheap natural gas. Storage isnt the whole picture.
Other variables come into play as well. A mild and windy (lots of wind power) would help keep energy cost lower. From what I have seen, currently energy cost are expected to triple however worst case scenario could be 10-15 times increase. The effects on society and economic would be enormous.
Germany secret: They went into panic buy mode and started severely overpaying for gas in order to secure all of the supply they might need. This not only made gas more expensive for everyone else, but also influenced electricity prices.
It's not virtue signaling to want to run as fast as possible from the supply of a known aggressor that won't stop trying to invade its neighbors. Germany got itself into this mess it was warned for decades not to. It's going to hurt to decouple, that's a fact.
Aside from maybe the coldest two weeks, the climate is not even uncomfortable if you are inside (no wind or precipitation), wear thick clothing, and move a little. If you do physical labor, you're going to be sweating.
Nobody is going to die from cold in western Europe's semi-oceanic climate, even without any gas at all. For the vulnerable, there's plenty of alternative fuels. But we do have gas and lots of it, so this seems entirely baseless.
Economic disruption and having to keep our homes and offices a few degrees cooler than we’re used to will make this a “hard winter” for the two or three generations of western Europeans largely used to staying as warm as they like and general prosperity.
But not “hard winter” in terms of people freezing to death. Even if all gas were cut off (and it isn’t, Norway is still exporting) too many of us still have oil heating and/or wood-burning stoves, and are not completely anti-social.
Plus, as another commenter said, it’s not that cold in a lot of Europe all winter long.
And the places that are? Why, they’re the ones most motivated not to let Putin have his way with their countries and were the angriest with Germany over Nordstream - the Baltics and Poland.
At least in Germany, not everyone uses gas heating - lots of domestic and institutional oil furnaces and tanks still around, like the recently-filled one in our basement that holds two bad winters’ worth of luxurious (21-22 C) warmth, or four normal winters’ worth of careful (18-19 C) usage. If needed, we can clamp down even further, closing off some rooms.
My husband’s parents switched to gas two years ago when their old oil furnace finally became irreparable, so my husband set them up with a diesel heater in their bedroom with enough fuel for two or three days, and the intention of bringing them down here in the worst case.
I’m sure that families and friends all over Germany and the rest of the EU have similar plans.
To put this in relation, here is a comparison of gas storage capacities in Europe:
https://erdgasspeicher.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ines_ga...
Here is table from Sunday which also shows the total gas stored in each country, along with the capacity ("Working volume"), annual consumption, and injection / withdrawal capacities:
https://agsi.gie.eu/
Missing from the list is Switzerland, which does not have any gas storage capacities at all.
You can see it graphically (with more data) at https://gasdashboard.entsog.eu/ (scroll down a bit)
There's also Bert's Gazmon for quick overview
https://berthub.eu/gazmon/
The UK has 35Mtpa LNG port capacity and spain has 44Mtpa which is more than the rest put together though (Germany has 0!), so it probably balances out in terms of screwedness.
The UK also produces about half of it natural gas.
Each country has differing reliance on natural gas too. The UK is particularly reliant, for example.
Only the Netherlands looks well prepared - 8.8Mtpa of LNG import capacity, 120TWh of storage and a relatively small population.
Somebody should make a model of country per country screwedness that takes all of this into account.
According to a recent Lord's debate the UK only has 5 days supply at peak demand, but are planning to re-open a mothballed storage facility to double this. As the UK gets 45% of its gas from its own domestic resources, the gas fields can be considered a huge gas storage facility.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2022-09-07/debates/9AFA9...
Historically, the UK has not had much gas storage capacity (even Rough wasn't that big) because gas wells have a reasonable amount of turndown capacity and those wells are directly coupled through St Fergus and other sites into gas cleaning and then into the national gas grid.
Germany has never had significant gas production and is heavily gas dependent so has built up storage facilities for strategic reasons.
The mistake made was that since 2004, the UK has become a gas importer with a greater fraction of imports every year. There was then a series of judgements made by successive governments that:
1) Gas was only a bridge fuel from which the UK would move away over time
2) The UK network is also essentially directly coupled into the Norwegian gas system which is and was massive
3) The UK has proportionately a very large amount of LNG terminal capacity
Therefore it was decided that it was not necessary either to develop more storage capacity nor indeed to pay for the re-completion of Rough in order to keep it operating. This now seems to have been a serious error.
This is particularly true because:
1) The UK, like The Netherlands, is almost entirely gas heated, Germany is also heavily gas dependent but heating mixes vary across European countries by a lot more than most people appreciate. This is because the UK and The Netherlands discovered gas early and gas is a brilliant heating fuel (apart from the whole global warming thing...). Norway, which discovered gas in large quantities only after it had already built hydro infrastructure and invested in electric heating, doesn't use much gas for heating domestically.
2) The UK has a lot of renewables and very little hydro and has therefore developed over the last decade into a gas + renewables electrical grid and closed its coal power plants. The great wave of nuclear AGR shutdowns has barely started but the Magnoxes are mostly offline already. Other European countries have kept their coal plants around either in daily use or on standby and are therefore able to bring them back. The GB grid simply doesn't have much idled but non-demolished coal capacity left on it.
3) Although, unlike most EU power markets, the GB electricity market is not pure "energy only" and has a capacity market, like those markets, electricity is priced at the marginal cost which in most hours is set by gas generation.
So the UK gets a double whammy of gas price effects.
All models and predictions will be based on assumptions, for example, there is a movement to not pay bills.
What if the people not paying decide that, since they are not paying, they might as well use as much as possible?
All it would take is a charismatic populist to come along and to promote such a thing for any reserves to be gone.
I am not sure that having LNG ports makes much difference if you have a minor currency such as Sterling and you have to just print more of it to pay for LNG. Other customers might have a manufacturing base or lots of gold, which would trump paper money.
Sterling is an anomalously strong and major currency given the UK's size and wealth.
...said my Dad in 2008.
You can also see some of the numbers here https://memgraph.com/blog/gas-pipelines-in-europe or even try to run different scenarios https://playground.memgraph.com/sandbox/europe-gas-pipelines...
On the topic of AGSI, the company I work for published a Python client to work with their API in case you're interested: https://github.com/ROITI-Ltd/alsi-py
Edit: Correction, it's for ALSI, not AGSI, sorry about that. We should add AGSI now that the API is available.
To make it even better it would be useful to have the stored amount per capita and also number of days the country can rely on stored amount. Although I understand the usage will heavily depend on the weather and how far the country will go in restricting the usage of gas reserves (for example, shutting down various production sectors).
Additionally the level of dependence on Russian gas differs between countries as well.
Most EU countries do not have LNG terminals FYI it's not something that magically appears by itself. Germany has already slowed down approvals for other construction projects due to construction supply-chain issues.
Yeah, good point. So another point would also be listing ability to replenish the reserves (availability of LNG terminals and other negotiated supply solutions).
It would be much more interesting to see how many days of gas runway each country has based on historical usage.
That would be a very useless data, as gas consumption depends on the price. And the price is at a historic high, so we simply don't know what that means.
German Grid regulator BNetzA created forecasts based on historic consumption and assumed savings. But right now we have storage level way above even the most wildly optimistic scenario. This forcast is so hard i don't think it has any merit.
You can have a look at the AGSI+ [1], they list a Stock/Consuption ratio as 22%. But this number is IHMO meaningless, as it does not mean all is well for 22% of a year = 78 days, and than everything collapses.
[1] https://agsi.gie.eu/
Sorry, but what you write nonsense and incoherent.
>What utter nonsense, of course historical trends are important, we've had high prices before.
Not remotely as high as we have had. Drawing conclusions from price elasticity at 25€ to price elasticity at 300€ is nothing but pure speculations.
>. Also many companies would normally hedge the prices, after all large factories and power stations don't just shutdown because of price fluctuations.
Made up financial instruments are useless when the counterparty simply does not fullfill their contracts. Right now we care about actual prices, for actual, physical delivery.
>The problem we have now is that the idiotic policies of EU governments will make the price essentially infinite because there will be no f'ing gas.
Conterpoint: The price is not infinite. What's happening with the infinite money glitch for buying gas for storage is that the price of the scarcity in the winter was priced in since this spring. Spreading out a scarcity event to something longer and less serve gives markets time to adjust. There is nothing idiotic about this, it's pure common sense.
>This year is massively exceptional
Yes, that's my point, why forecasts do not make much sense.
>aforementioned strategic leadership from the governments but we've had plenty of "normal" years to draw consumption trends from.
And what's your point? Is the not exceptional and we can make forecasts, or is it infinite? Your post is completely incoherent and does not make any sense.
Typical statistics that tells exactly nothing. If country A has 10 liters gas storage and it is 100% full and country B has 10 000 gas storage 50% full? Who is in a better shape? Hard to say, still - maybe country A uses 5 liters a year and country B 10 000 000 liters a year? Or vice versa. What if country A has long term LPG purchase deals to gasport (like Poland does) and does not have to pay spot price, etc.
Guys behind this clicks farm claim to "Telling data-driven stories about politics, climate, economics, and more.", but they tell no story, I would not trust them.
I think this would be a lot more useful if it showed the capacity. Our problem in the UK isn't keeping our reserves at capacity, it's that they're tiny.
Also what does Daily Trend mean here? I thought it'd be the percentage change since yesterday, but the UK having a negative daily trend and being at 100% now wouldn't work with that.
> I think this would be a lot more useful if it showed the capacity. Our problem in the UK isn't keeping our reserves at capacity, it's that they're tiny.
You are right. Check the "Stock/Consumption %" column here: https://agsi.gie.eu/ (choose the correct UK)
The UK (post-Brexit) currently has 1.2% of yearly capacity stored, and reserves are at 100%
I wonder what the UK gas reserves are for? Demand smoothing?
Thanks, that source has a lot more data! The Stock / Consumption field is especially interesting for comparison. The UK's largest gas storage plant closed in 2017 (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-stor...), AFAIK there's been no effort to replace it since then. Not sure why it's been kept so low though.
When I wrote the code that published that for Storengy UK around 4 years ago I never expected AGSI would get featured on HN. Strange world we live in.
Ukraine is at 28.4%, that probably speaks how much reserve storage they have. After the war it will be important location for Azerbaijan gas transit (via Georgia and Black Sea). The pipeline will take some time to build, but it will make it more likely that they eventually join the EU and NATO as well.
So from one dictator to another
> Poland and Hungary, two countries which should never have been allowed to join and are currently causing the union a lot of issues
May I know why exactly these two countries should not be allowed to join EU? Because they cause issues? I mean, every country causes some issues. In the current context Germany and its former government lobbying for Russian gas causes issues of perhaps much larger scale. Tell me about corruption.
> Because they cause issues? I mean, every country causes some issues.
Both Hungary and Poland have been consistently undermining the rule of law for years. Hungary has also started going after freedom of expression and minority rights and let’s not talk about the anti-gay laws for which the European Commission is suing them. The only reason they haven’t been stripped of their voting rights in the EU (the harshest sanction available) is that the unanimity of the other members is required and they shield each other. It’s a disgrace.
Do note the timeline. Up to 2015 the governments of Poland were largely liberal.
The current ruling party's conservative coalition from 2005 collapsed under its own weight in two years.
You're judging the whole situation through the lens of the actions of a single political party, which came into power only because as liberal as liberals might be, they were sort of okay with having a sizeable disenfranchised minority in the country.
Hungarian and Polish mores are far away from what the EU is standing for, the eastern you go the more conservatives the mores are. Nothing wrong with that in itself, sovereign nations can do and think whatever they wish inside their own borders. The problem is that you can't build unity when people have widely different opinions on such basic things, especially when you need unanimity to do anything.
Joining the EU shouldn't only be about getting free money to rebuild your decrepit infrastructure and fund your local mafias. Lots of countries were accepted for purely strategic reason (ie. we prefer them with US than with Russia or China)
It's not about corruption, it's about illiberalism.
There is so much wrong in this comment.
>they refused to join the Istanbul Convention
Ukraine has joined the Istanbul Convention.
>because it violates their Christian values
Outside Poland the social conservatism in Eastern Europe has very little to do with religion. Russia and Hungary are full of irreligious/atheist people with some rather controversial views on minorities and LGBT people.
> There is so much wrong in this comment.
I don’t think so, no.
> Ukraine has joined the Istanbul Convention.
I missed that they finally ratified it _the 18th of July 2022_. It’s not like they had a choice. It was a prerequisite to them getting candidate status for the EU adhesion. I’m glade this is starting to bring positive change to the country.
> Outside Poland the social conservatism in Eastern Europe has very little to do with religion.
The majority in the Rada refused to ratify in 2016 because they thought the use of the world gender and the way sexual orientation was presented went against the country Christian values. See this Euractiv article at the time for more details: https://www.euractiv.com/section/europe-s-east/news/ukraine-...
Have you ever been to any of the mentioned countries or spoken with people from there, or is your opinion based on what you hear and see as an outsider?
I've been to Macedonia, Poland and Hungary and I agree with everything said and implied about those countries in the GP.
It is not necessary to travel to Poland or Hungary to be aware that the populist governments of these countries have embraced conspiratorialism, anti-semitism, anti-ziganism, revisionism, homophobia, while openly disregarding liberal institutions such as the separation of church and state, independence of the judiciary, freedom of expression, pluralism. You can simply listen to what people from those countries who do embrace the liberal values associated with the EU project have said about their home countries.
I agree with almost everything you wrote, but I can totally understand not being fond of gypsies. Throughout the Balkans their compounds are hives of criminality, guns and drugs, and that is not because they are discriminated against.
They are incredibly closed and conservative (in their own ways) societies, against any form of integration and modernisation, while at the same time leeching off any benefits the host states provide them (healthcare, benefits, infrastructure) while not only providing nothing in return, but a negative effect.
Poland tries to accommodate backward/barbarian gypsie minorities in really weird/bad ways. There is actually a law that allows sex with minors .. if you are a gypsie, because those are your traditional religious ways:
https://www.saos.org.pl/judgments/392058
"since they got married according to the law and tradition of their community, and then undertook voluntary sexual intercourse, which is even an element, which the Court also knows ex officio, confirming the effectiveness of the marriage"
It was ok to have sex with 14 year old child, because thats how you assert (illegal) marriage in this culture ...
Without necessarily agreeing with your characterisation, it can be true that achieving equality and plurality is difficult.
However, there is a big difference between a government which is trying to resolve social problems and lead the population towards a better settlement, and one which takes advantage of divisions to create fear and appeal to the worse sentiments of the majority.
> You can simply listen to what people from those countries who do embrace the liberal values associated with the EU project have said about their home countries.
Would you throw them under the bus just to keep the populists out of the Union?
Also now that apparently Sweden is going to have a populist right-wing government, should they leave the EU?
To be clear: I'm asking these questions to highlight the ridiculousness of looking at a whole country through the lens of their (temporary) government.
If Sweden starts undermining the rule of law, they should definitely be excluded yes. Sadly the EU has no law allowing it to do that.
Governments are elected. It’s not stupid to look at what a country is actually doing. Hungary even gave Fidesz a second term.
Countries which cross the EU red lines should be excluded no question.
The point is not that they should be thrown out of the EU, but that the EU is now much more reluctant to allow another country with similar social and political problems to join.
I have indeed been to both Albania and Macedonia. Great countries, awesome people, I enjoyed my trip tremendously. But locals do indeed complain about corruption and the inefficiency of their government when you take with them. The issue with criminality and especially drug trafficking is also very much palpable in Albania.
Your nick nickname is telling me exactly what I need to know about reading such comments
this person said not nice things about 5 countries without any facts. Then added one fact in the edit.
How is that constructive discussion. What is the point of comments like that?
Why do you feel the need to share your hateful/bigoted and absolutely wrong opinions?
There is indeed an intense propaganda campaign, but it's coming from Russia and unfortunately you seem to be repeating their talking points.
Joining the EU improves and aligns countries, so what if they currently have issues, they will in time improve.
We are stronger together.
His opinion is perfectly reasonable. Even without the war, Ukraine is extremely far from EU accession standards. It was very nearly a failed state in the early 2010s. Nobody West of the Elbe river wants to deal with yet another ultra-conservative and corrupt state, at least certainly not while veto powers exist.
> so what if they currently have issues, they will in time improve
Or they'll take EU cohesion funds to fuel cronyism and populism as their neighbours did.
This is why candidate status exists and goals for aligning... Why do you imagine joining would be instantaneous?
> Ukraine is extremely far from EU accession standards. It was very nearly a failed state in the early 2010s.
That's what long term russian ocupation, constant russian meddling after 89 and now invasion does... see moldova, belarus too.
People not familiar with Ukraine just do not realize how much Kremlin influence fueled corruption and criminal activities in the countries. Transnistria (Russian occupied territory in Moldova) is literally a criminal state, had huge impact on the the southern parts, ORDLO became the same in recent years. To the north Belarus is a dictatorship, not exactly the honest trade partner.
By your metric, the most "socially backward" country that joined the EU was the United Kingdom, as its the only one that actually exited so far.
EDIT: regarding your edit - yep, Ukraine is currently a very backwards and crappy country, basically no better than Russia. While Russia is propped up by infinite monies flowing from the ground, Ukraine doesn't have it, so it's much more dilapidated. It's a small miracle that it didn't collapse economically and became Putin's client, just as Belarus had before. However, the one huge difference is that Ukraine doesn't have centuries of imperialistic and autocractic traditions that define Russia - so, it's population is not excited about subjugating other nations, and is ok with democracy as a form of government.
Last time I checked the UK didn’t have to face widespread homophobic attacks conducted by groups advocating discrimination and violence, widespread gender-based violence, ineffective investigation of violence against journalists, impunity of police and issues relating to bringing torturers to justice. Because that was the reality in Ukraine before the war.
Yeah maybe check again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG...
Considering the rest of your comment picturing Ukraine as some backwater (post)soviet hell hole: You've never been there. You've never even talked to someone from there.
I don't think that has anything to do with it. The UK is not at all normal socially though.
It's a very strange country, what its lack of respect for freedom of speech etcetera. It's been formalizing its authoritarian excesses and made them normal, and I get the impression that the British have gotten used to it and accept it as the way things should be.
I can't read Hungarian or Polish, so maybe I don't see these things, but I don't feel that Poles or Hungarians have internalized a view that they can't say what they mean in the way that I feel that the Brits have, so while you may be intending some kind of irony in your remark, Britain may in fact be the most backwards country, socially, in Europe.
The Brits seem to feel that punishment of people who are in the way, or inconvenient, or challenging the state is legitimate.
> Britain may in fact be the most backwards country, socially, in Europe*
Probably time to go and touch some grass
* apparently the op has gone back to edit this out of their original comment
Yes, but surely freedom of speech, the right to protest etc. are much more basic than the stuff the Polish dislike?
As long as the Poles and Hungarians aren't arresting people willy-nilly for protesting or writing things on the internet then they're not even in the same league as the Brits when it comes to social regression.
> surely freedom of speech, the right to protest [are the fundamental determinants of social progression]
a) No, that's pretty arbitrary. Every country has limits on freedom of speech and expression, and they all draw the line in different places.
b) It is 100% not illegal to express an opinion that Charles isn't fit to be king, that the monarchy should be abolished and so on. No end of people saying just that on the radio, on the TV, in print, etc
c) Protest remains legal; there was a large protest about the shooting of Chris Kaba this weekend
d) Picketing funerals is considered a breach of the peace, and a public order offense
To use point D to claim the UK is the most socially backward country in Europe is to have spent faaaar too long online.
Surely however, democratic society has its foundation in these things.
Without freedom of speech, we don't a free formation of ideas in society, so there can be no legitimate elections. Without freedom to protest and to have political gatherings we don't have freedom to communicate ideas to people who don't see them, and then again, we don't have prerequisites for a functioning democracy
I think a) is very dubious-- even things like the 'crying fire in a crowded theater' are associated with suppression of speech that afterwards could be seen to be deeply illegitimate, so even the US assurances concerning free speech are likely to be much too weak.
With regard to b) people have despite this been arrested in the context of remarks such as 'fuck imperialism', similarly with regard to c), perfectly nonviolent protesters have been arrested, even charged.
d) is not relevant, for the context of at least these arrests and charges has been the proclamation of Charles as King and if the proclamation is mixed with the funeral, such an mixing of the ceremonies is outside of the control of those who wish to protest the proclamation.
You are now changing your argument from "Britain may in fact be the most backwards country, socially" to "Britain doesn't have a functioning democracy".
Every country on earth has forms of expression that aren't protected. I'm sorry you don't like that, but it doesn't make it any less true.
People have not been arrested because they said "fuck imperialism". Here, I'll say it now. Fuck Imperialism! There is zero chance I will get in any legal issue in the UK for this, and I also believe that you know this full well. Once more with feeling, fuck imperialism!
In the UK, as in almost every country, violence isn't the sole determinant of whether or not a protest is legal. In the US for example, the degree to which you obstruct traffic is important to the legality of your protest.
To, me democracy is something social and at the core of the social functioning of a country. However, these things are prerequisites for democracy, they are not democracy itself and are much more connected to social progress than democracy itself.
That some countries go further than the UK does not change how to view what has been aid.
People have been arrested because of a placard where the offensive element was the word 'fuck' in the sentence 'Fuck imperialism' near an event relating to the proclamation of Charles as King. It has been a major story and has been decried as illegitimate by the British press. Indeed, there is a case of a lawyer being threatened with arrest after expressing the intent to write 'Not my King' on it (https://metro.co.uk/2022/09/13/man-threatened-with-arrest-if...).
Your last remark is not relevant, because such things have not been alleged in any of these cases.
In Snow Crash, there was a giant CIA earth that held all the data for everything and you could zoom in and out.
While the UX is probably "executive demo" rather than "daily power user", this and other data is perfect for such an approach.
It tells a meaningful OSInT story.
Basically, as a data user, where are my flying cars?
Those numbers ARE ABSOLUTELY WORHTLESS. "capacity filled in percent" is a WORTHLESS METRIC that tells the lay reader NOTHING at all.
Austria might have a max capacity of 60% of their yearly demand, Germany might have 200% (made up numbers for illustration). In that case with full capacity, Austria could survive 4 months, while Germany could go two years. Yes, this disregards cross-country sharing, but even averaged across different countries, percentage means nothing. It doesn't tell us anything. The one and only question is: "How long can we go without new gas?" and percentage values don't answer it.
Capacity should be displayed either in average-demand days or a timeframe (= How many days could we satisfy demand with our stored gas alone?).
The answer to your question "How long can we go without new gas?" would be a meaningless metric if not accompanied with a large amount of qualification.
What is meant by "without new gas"? Without LNG shipments? Without local/European produced NG? Or just without Russian NG imports? Without any imports?
What does it mean "to go"? To consume at some historical rate? Consumption varies with NG prices - recently consumption has been curtailed as a result of high NG prices. At a macro scale, NG consumption has been falling. Europe-wide annual consumption is about 20% less than it was 10 years ago.
And an unqualified time answer - say one month, for example - would be meaningless as the rate of gas consumption is highly seasonal at various scales (daily, weekly, annually). A winter month is not equal to a summer month for example.
> What is meant by "without new gas"?
I guess that could all be calculated and presented and give us an idea. The looming threat is Russia not giving us any of their gas now, other sources are "safe", so I guess that's the baseline: How long can we go without Russian gas?
> And an unqualified time answer - say one month, for example - would be meaningless as the rate of gas consumption is highly seasonal at various scales (daily, weekly, annually). A winter month is not equal to a summer month for example.
That's why I discerned between "average consumption days" and "timeframe from now on / day x on".
Russia has shut down pretty much all of their supplies, and here we are, filling the storage for the winter. Storage levels are average.
That's probably about as close as you can get to having an idea. You might also have a look at the graphs at bruegel, but that wont help all that much.
It's very vague, but so is the situation.
What's rarely mentioned is that many European countries have massive reserves of recoverable shale gas but have banned fracking and are thus depending on imported gas...
That's one of the reasons the US are cashing in right now while Europe is having an "energy crisis".
Currently in EU renewable energy is practically 40%.
So there is zero point in digging holes in the ground. They can easily buy the rest and quickly grow renewable energy share (basically what they are doing now).
Europe is heavily dependent on gas, as the current situation painfully shows. It seems very premature to claim that there is "zero point digging holes in the ground" and odd to claim that they can "easily buy the rest" when energy costs are currently at crisis level.
Do you think that Qatar, UAE, Saudi and Iran are going to stop exporting natural gas imminently?
That's not the point, is it? Although they might depending on the circumstances (again, as we can see right now).
The point is that 'digging holes in the ground' isn't inherently more secure than making sure that you can import fuel from other countries.
Both involve a certain amount of risk and uncertainty. Both require preparation and planning, and some degree of subordination of other national interests.
This is perhaps one of the lessons of the Ukraine conflict - Russia is still exporting gas to Germany and Germany is still importing it, despite diplomatic relations between the two countries being at a nadir. It's simply not in either country's interest not to carry on with the commercial relationship.
That seems to high, I came up with 12.4% primary energy in 2021 and 22.1% gross final energy in 2020 after a quick search.
I don't know if it's the case here but sometimes numbers for 'energy' are quoted when they really are numbers for 'electricity'.
IDK if this comment is sarcastic or not, but this whole situation is due to Europe being naive about buying gas 'easily'.
it's interesting but percent value don't tell much, it depends of stockage capacity.
It would be interesting to know the end game here.
If the Ukrainian war ends, I assume that isn't the end of it. I assume the taps from Russia will turn back on, but it has shown itself to be an unreliable supply.
I think Russian bet is that Europe would take 3-7 years to shift dependence away from Russian gas and that in the mean time a lack of access to cheap energy will lead to economic collapse, which will ultimately make the shift even harder. Putin is not testing our resolve but our ability.
I suspect the goal is also also to trigger conflicts between EU member nations over energy scarcity. E.g. Germany has enough gas to last Germany for the winter so it prioritizes Germany and throws Lithuania under the bus so Lithuania lashes out, etc. A short term scarcity will lead to long term fractures - maybe even EU exits.
Meanwhile, this opens the door for politicians who will make peace with Russia and bring the gas taps back online and revive a sputtering economy - a role that Orban seems to be trying to fill pre-emptively.
Mm. Plausibly what they think.
I don't know when countries typically shift from economic conflict to kinetic conflict, but I hope that Russian intelligence isn't dumb/arrogant enough to assume that transition has zero probability.
Russia hoping for European economic collapse would be just as stupid as Europe hoping for Russia's economic collapse.
They are too entangled at this point for either to survive the collapse of another.
A view from Germany:
Up to Russian invasion this February: old oil furnaces were being avidly replaced with natural gas ones. Solar installations were starting to slack off. Lots of re-roofing and new exterior wall insulation.
Since then: no slacking in the roofing and exterior wall insulation, but now everyone has a keen interest in heat pumps, and solar panels are being installed everywhere.
Gonna be hard to convince people to take their chances again with a fuel from such an unreliable source in the next few years, I think, especially if this is a bad winter and rationing happens.
Few people want to plan ahead (and spend the money that goes along with being prepared)... until they are in trouble.
I won't say that good things have come from this war, but it certainly is a wake-up call for countries to get their future plans in better order.
There is simply no excuse for the most industrially advanced country in the world (Germany) to have slacked off so much when it comes to energy. It must be some political angle, because not too many years ago Germany was one of the leaders in expanding their renewable energy sources.
> Since then: no slacking in the roofing and exterior wall insulation, but now everyone has a keen interest in heat pumps, and solar panels are being installed everywhere.
France here... Seeing how things were turning in May I turned my open fireplace into a closed one (way better efficiency) and ordered metric shit-tons of dry wood (I've now got enough for at least two years). Thankfully my house ain't using natural gas at all so at least I'm dodging that one problem. Now electricity may be rationed this winter: dunno, we'll see. But at least I won't be dying of cold.
Heating oneself burning wood has this advantage that it's stone-agey enough: chop a tree into smaller pieces, let them dry for a year, you can heat now heat your house during winter.
And nobody can "ration" me / prevent me from putting wood in the fireplace: that's the "stone age" part of it. The main french electricity company, on the other hand, is ran by state apparatchiks and if they decided to ration electricity (because, by "chance", half of the nuclear reactors are all simultaneously down), I'm pretty much sorry out of luck.
Overall I'm pretty disappointed by the EU (I'm an EU citizen) and plan to GTFO. I tried last year but it failed (residency was hard to obtain where I tried to go) but I'll very probably try again.
> because, by "chance", half of the nuclear reactors are all simultaneously down
What do you mean with the quotes? It's not by chance, it's due to backlogged maintenance (due to Covid) and some corrosion issues in a few reactors. The plan is to have all maintenance over before the winter.
EDF is certainly run by state apparatchiks, but it's hard to argue that they haven't done a pretty good job making electricity available cheaply and plentifully to French consumers.
EDF is mostly doing a good job especially considering how the EU competition regulation hinders them but they seriously screwed up with the nuclear power stations maintenance situation.
I'm currently renovating a house. My government are offering subsidies if you disconnect your gas supply and go all-electric. We'll be doing that alongside full solar (possibly with battery) and heat-pumps for heating/cooling.
Be careful though: there are regions in the EU where electricity prices went crazy up. I know people who had a fixed plan at 120 EUR / month from an electricity company that went belly up who needed to take a new plan. My brother went from 120 EUR / month to 400 EUR / month for his electricity bill. Sister-in-law got 6 K EUR year-on-year adjustment for her electricity bill (so 500 EUR more per month on average). And a friend, for a big house granted, went from 120 EUR / month to 800 EUR / month.
Hopefully the end game will be to see this as an opportunity to do something against climate change and lower the gas consumption permanently. I doubt that will happen though.
Me too. A flagging economy would make capital investments in green energy even more difficult. If China decides to sanction us we will also lose access to most of the underpriced green energy. A flagging economy, no gas and skyrocketing solar panel/wind turbine prices will mean a lot more coal.
Europe didnt make enough hay while the sun was shining.
> I assume the taps from Russia will turn back on
Why? The current trend is to work hard in order to reduce any form of business with Russia that would help them to rebuild the army and become a threat again.
I assume that turning the taps back on would be seen as a short-term thing in order to fill storages and avoid short-term economic/humanitarian domestic issues. There's surely no country left left in the EU that considers Russia to be a tolerable long-term trading partner, except maybe for Hungary.
I don't think even Hungary trusts Russia as a trading partner... they just see them as useful to Hungary.
Especially right now, when they can leverage the Russian situation and annoy the EU by striking favorable deals.
And just after that quote I said:
>but it has shown itself to be an unreliable supply
Russia is using gas to try and keep Europe out of the conflict. Once the war ends that ceases to be a motivator. Thus I assume they will turn the taps back on. That doesn't mean we want to rely on it which is the whole point of the question. Victory in Ukraine doesn't end this, so what's the end game. Is there going to be a further push for renewables? Gas from other sources? What's the time frames?
> Russia is using gas to try and keep Europe out of the conflict.
But it's not working, is it? Practically the whole Europe is helping Ukraine, sending weapons and everything we can to help.
It's not the question of how much gas Russia offers, it's the question of how much Europe is willing to take from them. Russia's status is very close to North Korea now - it's just unethical to make business with a state that got mentally stuck in XIX century and still thinks killing innocent people to grab more land is a good strategy.
I didn't say it was working.
I'm not saying we're going back to russian gas. Again that's the point of the question!
I assume countries in the EU will no longer eschew longer gas contracts in favor of the spot market. The contracts have always been available and you might not have much faith in Russia any more but Europes second largest gas provider, Norway is still here. It's only a matter of making the choice.
This is going to be an "at your own risk" thing. If a country wants to build its economy around energy supplies from a regime that has shown it can and will use the energy tap as leverage and as a weapon, don't run crying back to mommy. I think everyone understands that.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/08/02/hysata-brings-capilla...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...
Throw in some <$100/kWh 4-12hr storage, and it's starting to look really appealing to make your own.
There is an emergency plan being executed and expedited to reduce total gas demand by 30%, which just happens to be the amount Europe imports. With half of that 15% this winter.
Reducing energy consumption will only lead to impoverishment.
Not all reduction of consumption decreases output. For example, leaks could be plugged, insulation can be improved, more efficient machines could be used.
Also, not all output is equal, not does all output have to be done at a fixed time. Heating homes has to be done during winter, but some factories can postpone production a few months to wait for more favourable circumstances.
Furthermore, it's only a reduction in a few energy sources that are required, with gas being the most important. Other sources could be used to compensate to an extent. We're seeing some gas power plants moving back to coal for example. Not great for carbon emissions, but it has more and more flexible sources.
For example, a lot of cities in Germany cut back on indoor pools this summer, and are considering it for the winter.
Sounds trivial, but keeping 25m long indoor pool 23-24 degrees in the winter takes a lot of energy.
It would suck for people who had gotten used to them being open again after the Covid years, but wouldn’t have much negative economic impact.
In France indoor ice rinks are getting closed too. Again, it's trivial but they consume lots of energy.
If you look at the current plans in most countries, they're largely about reducing waste and excessive usage. I mean... you could consider not being allowed to heat your private swimming pool "impoverishment", but probably only if you were comically wealthy and entitled.
(I'm actually a little surprised just _how_ un-aggressive the plans generally are.)
So will permitting extortion of an entire continent by a dictatorship.
The goal is not to permanently ration. The goal is to get through the winter, so there’s time for the longer term fixes to be put in place.
Please tell me how keeping your house at 70 degrees and wearing warm clothing instead of 72 degrees and wearing a t-shirt is impoverishment.
Fortunately, not all energy consumption is gas.
Citation needed.
Really hoping to see power2gas facilities scale up. Gas storage seems like the most credible solution for stable, season-scale, grid-scale energy storage. Of course there are large conversion inefficiencies in a chain like wind->electricity->electrolysis->hydrogen->CCGT, but that’s where massive overbuilding of renewable generation capacity comes in.
The UK is aiming to have 50GW of wind capacity by 2030. It needs at least 300GW to decarbonize and ensure energy security.
Gee, it looks like that if we don't sell anything (but with this gov you never know) we (as in Netherlands) might be dodging the proverbial bullet this winter.
But I am personally counting on the fact that this gov will fuck up as usual ... always plan for the worst, then it can only be better...
This is strange, everything I heard is that Germany is in trouble with the gas situation but here it seems they have the most stored gas? Is this correct in content and meaning?
Lots of European countries are having trouble with gas, Germany was (IMHO) singled out due to being content about their situation of being reliant on russia (see NS2) before the invasion.
They also have the largest population, produce no gas, have no LNG import capacity and have a bunch of industries built around cheap natural gas. Storage isnt the whole picture.
Other variables come into play as well. A mild and windy (lots of wind power) would help keep energy cost lower. From what I have seen, currently energy cost are expected to triple however worst case scenario could be 10-15 times increase. The effects on society and economic would be enormous.
We are/were even exporting gas-produced electricity to France because so many of their nuclear plants were failing.
edit: Here’s a source: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/germany-expor...
Germany secret: They went into panic buy mode and started severely overpaying for gas in order to secure all of the supply they might need. This not only made gas more expensive for everyone else, but also influenced electricity prices.
It's not virtue signaling to want to run as fast as possible from the supply of a known aggressor that won't stop trying to invade its neighbors. Germany got itself into this mess it was warned for decades not to. It's going to hurt to decouple, that's a fact.
> run as fast as possible from the supply of a known aggressor that won't stop trying to invade its neighbors
This could literally describe China though.
> It's not virtue signaling to want to run as fast as possible from the supply of a known aggressor that won't stop trying to invade
But it is hardly a point of principle, given how OK everyone had been with the supply of all the other known aggressors.
If it's not virtue signaling and it's obviously not a principle, then what is it?
If climate change doesn’t bless Europe with a warmer winter this year I see no way that a bunch of people won’t freeze to death.
Aside from maybe the coldest two weeks, the climate is not even uncomfortable if you are inside (no wind or precipitation), wear thick clothing, and move a little. If you do physical labor, you're going to be sweating.
Nobody is going to die from cold in western Europe's semi-oceanic climate, even without any gas at all. For the vulnerable, there's plenty of alternative fuels. But we do have gas and lots of it, so this seems entirely baseless.
So I guess the talk of Europe having a hard winter coming up is entirely overblown.
As somebody who lives there and knows what's it like to be in a unheated apartment: Rest assured, yes it is.
And the fearmongering serves the interests of some people, of course.
Economic disruption and having to keep our homes and offices a few degrees cooler than we’re used to will make this a “hard winter” for the two or three generations of western Europeans largely used to staying as warm as they like and general prosperity.
But not “hard winter” in terms of people freezing to death. Even if all gas were cut off (and it isn’t, Norway is still exporting) too many of us still have oil heating and/or wood-burning stoves, and are not completely anti-social.
Plus, as another commenter said, it’s not that cold in a lot of Europe all winter long.
And the places that are? Why, they’re the ones most motivated not to let Putin have his way with their countries and were the angriest with Germany over Nordstream - the Baltics and Poland.
My heater was broken one winter, so I had a completely unheated apartment for quite a while in germany.
It's not cosy, but far, far from freezing to death.
Countries further north do not use gas for heating, countries further south do need it even less to stay above something tolerable.
At least in Germany, not everyone uses gas heating - lots of domestic and institutional oil furnaces and tanks still around, like the recently-filled one in our basement that holds two bad winters’ worth of luxurious (21-22 C) warmth, or four normal winters’ worth of careful (18-19 C) usage. If needed, we can clamp down even further, closing off some rooms.
My husband’s parents switched to gas two years ago when their old oil furnace finally became irreparable, so my husband set them up with a diesel heater in their bedroom with enough fuel for two or three days, and the intention of bringing them down here in the worst case.
I’m sure that families and friends all over Germany and the rest of the EU have similar plans.
Why?