BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 23
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
Natural gas has an opportunity to expand its market share, Swiss Axpo company told Trend.
As the largest producer of renewable energies in Switzerland, Axpo is making sustainable investments in the technologies of the future. The company’s focus is on hydropower, wind and biomass at optimal locations. On its way into this future, Axpo is thus securing a consistently sustainable and climate-friendly energy supply for its customers in Switzerland with its proven nuclear power plants.
“When it comes to the major tendencies in the global gas sector, today a large part of Europe is still heavily dependent on coal, which causes considerable greenhouse gas emissions. However, the IEA expects numerous coal-fired power plants in Europe to be decommissioned in the next few years. This offers the natural gas sector the opportunity to expand its market share,” said the company.
Axpo said that compared to fossil fuels such as coal or oil, power generation with natural gas emits far fewer greenhouse gases - around half as much as with coal.
“In addition, the high flexibility of natural gas is an ideal complement to the highly volatile renewable energies (wind, PV). Natural gas is therefore seen in many countries as a key technology for energy system transformation: In particular, countries without flexibly deployable hydropower rely on gas power plants,” said the company.
Global natural gas demand could fall by about 150 bcm/y or 4 percent y-o-y in 2020, says IEA.
The decline in demand has been revised from the initial 5 percent estimate published in the Global Energy Review 2020 report, and is based on revised Q1 data and market observations from the two first months of Q2, IEA earlier said in its report.
IEA believes that after a 4 percent drop in 2020, natural gas demand is expected to progressively recover in 2021 as consumption returns close to its pre-crisis level in mature markets, while emerging markets benefit from economic rebound and lower natural gas prices.
The impact of the 2020 crisis is, however, expected to have repercussions on the medium-term growth potential, resulting in about 75 bcm of lost growth over the forecast period, 2019 to 2025, reads the IEA report. “This forecast expects an average growth rate of 1.5 percent per year during this period.”
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