BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 27. The EU may potentially decrease its natural gas demand by close to 37 bcm in 2023, Trend reports via the latest overview of European gas market from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
According to the agency, this could be implemented through various initiatives aimed at improving energy efficiency, as well as through continued expansion of renewables power generation, deployment of heat pumps, at the same time, recognizing that such significant gas savings imply the collective and simultaneous implementation of these solutions with unprecedented speed and scale.
"However, that gas gap would not affect all regions of the EU equally, so the greatest efforts of solidarity should be focused on those regions where gas scarcity is more likely or in by gas systems able to contribute to a greater extent to the collective effort, due to having greater interconnection capacity or greater gas savings potential," the IEA noted.
At the same time, as the agency expects, reduced demand outside the EU would ease global LNG market tensions and could potentially improve the availability of LNG to the EU.
"Analysis by the members of the IEA's TFG indicates that European countries outside the EU could contribute to a 3 bcm reduction in natural gas demand in 2023, while non-European OECD countries would reduce their demand by 0.5 bcm through a combination of enhanced energy efficiency measures, expansion of renewables power generation and behavioral changes," the report added.
Meanwhile, as the IEA forecasts, the EU's natural gas demand is expected to decrease by close to 3 percent, or 10 bcm, year-on-year in 2023.