The Oxford institute for Energy studies

The transformation of the European Union’s energy sector poses a number of challenges to the European electricity system. Above all, both the anticipated increase of intermittent electricity from renewable sources and the completion of the internal energy market while guaranteeing a secure supply require an extensive development of electricity infrastructure at the European level. Nevertheless, Europe’s future electricity system entails numerous uncertainties. For example, the definite amount and the location of both electricity generation and consumption are unpredictable. In order to address these ambiguities, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) develops the two-yearly Ten-Year Network Development Plan (TYNDP). By exploring different plausible future paths using scenarios, the TYNDP aims to identify key infrastructure projects – namely transmission lines and cross-border interconnectors – for the future electricity system. In this capacity, the TYNDP is the central planning tool for European grid infrastructure. This paper explores whether the TYNDP effectively provides a solid planning foundation for future grid investments. For this end, the TYNDPs 2012-2018 are investigated in the light of European energy policies, and their utilization by stakeholders is scrutinized. The paper argues that an existing policy congruence and the strong link to the Projects of Common Interest (PCI) confine the TYNDP solely to the hardware of the electricity system. This in turn profoundly limits the TYNDP’s effectiveness as a strategic planning tool. Hence, a closer connection to the software components of the anticipated European electricity system – namely the future market design and (European) regulations – would further allow for a holistic planning and evaluation of future electricity infrastructure projects.

The outlook for gas demand in China is one of the most important questions facing the global gas market, as it will have significant consequences for gas producers and consumers across the world. The rapid rise in China’s gas demand has been catalysed by environmental concerns, in particular air quality, in the country’s major cities and the authors of this report, Akira Miyamoto and Chikako Ishiguro, provide a detailed analysis of the progress that has been made in introducing environmental legislation to pursue the goal of cleaning up China’s skies. They consider the impact that this has had on gas consumption in China over the past decade before analysing the major goals of the Blue Sky Action Plan and outlining its potential consequences for gas demand over the next two to three years.

Modelling studies suggest that COP21 targets can be met with global gas demand peaking in the 2030s and declining slowly thereafter. This would qualify gas to be considered a `transition fuel’ to a low carbon economy. However, such an outcome is by no means a foregone conclusion. There are limited numbers of countries outside the OECD which can be expected to afford to pay wholesale (or import) prices of $6-8/MMbtu and above, which are needed to remunerate 2017 delivery costs of large volumes of gas from new pipeline gas or LNG projects. Prices towards the top of (and certainly above) this range are likely to make gas increasingly uncompetitive leading to progressive demand destruction even in OECD countries. The current debate in the gas community is when the `glut’ of LNG will dissipate, and the global supply/demand balance will tighten. The unspoken assumption is that when this happens – generally believed to be around the early/mid 2020s – prices will rise somewhere close to 2011-14 levels, allowing a return to profitability for projects which came on stream since the mid-2010s and allowing new projects to move forward. Should this assumption prove be correct, it will create major problems for the future of gas. The key to gas fulfilling its potential role as a transition fuel up to and beyond 2030, is that it must be delivered to high income markets below $8/MMbtu, and to low income markets below $6/MMbtu (and ideally closer to $5/MMbtu). The major challenge to the future of gas will be to ensure that it does not become (and in many low-income countries remain) unaffordable and/or uncompetitive, long before its emissions make it unburnable.

A new round of political activity to promote the Southern Gas Corridor from the Caspian to Europe has begun. In February, European energy ministers and supplier nation officials met in Baku. In June, first gas entered the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) across Turkey, and the first substantial source of supply for the Southern Corridor, the Shah Deniz II project in Azerbaijan, started producing. Shah Deniz II will ramp up to peak output of 16 bcm/year by 2021-22. Europe will then receive around 10 bcm, no more than 2 per cent of its overall demand, via the Southern Corridor, compared to the 10-20 per cent that had been envisaged in Brussels. While political leaders continue to paint the corridor’s prospects in very bright colours, the market dynamics – in the Caspian region itself, in the Caucasus and Turkey, and in Europe – are less promising. Commercial conditions for the Southern Corridor’s success have deteriorated as political support for it has grown. This paper argues that, up to 2030, the corridor will most likely remain an insubstantial contributor to Europe’s gas balance. At best, there may be sufficient gas for a second string of TANAP, but only at the end of the 2020s. The paper considers the potential sources of supply for the Southern Corridor (Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and others including Iran, Kurdistan, and the East Mediterranean); demand and transport issues; and the conditions under which Southern Corridor gas will compete with other supply in the European market.

The EU has so far mostly focused on the electricity sector to reduce her greenhouse gas emissions. To meet its target, though, Europe will have to focus on other sectors, such as heating and cooling. The latter is Europe's single largest energy consumer, covering half of Europe's energy demand. 42% of Europe's current energy supply comes from natural gas. Therefore, the gas industry needs to understand the implications of the decarbonisation of the heating and cooling sector on natural gas demand.
However, the role of those sectors in the natural gas demand is still not properly understood. This paper tries to fill this vacuum by studying the heating and cooling sector in Europe, with a special focus on the implications for the gas industry, especially for the natural gas demand.

This paper looks at the implications of the 2015 Paris Agreement for renewables, energy efficiency and natural gas and draws conclusions on the limitations of renewables for meeting national and international climate targets, illustrated by the past and present German renewable-focused approach. It discusses the need to complement an all-electric renewable approach with the important contribution decarbonized natural gas can make to meet the decarbonisation targets of the Paris Agreement within the time frame given by it. Finally, it illustrates the overlap of EU decarbonisation and German renewable policy and how this hinders short term fuel switching to natural gas and possible remedies. Throughout the paper “gas”, unless otherwise specified, should be taken to mean “natural gas”.

This paper by Fan Gao, assesses the extent to which China is likely to achieve levels of shale gas production by 2020 which would make a meaningful difference to its growing need for imports of pipeline gas and LNG. The study suggests that given the rather disappointing progress on Coal Bed Methane production since exploration and development work started some 25 years ago, a cautionary approach is needed in anticipating the outlook for shale gas for the remainder of this decade. The specific challenges include water availability and population density demographics as well as the need to stimulate an innovative competitive dynamic in the Chinese upstream service sector and an appropriate upstream investment framework with foreign participants for the transfer and application of technology.

The paper provides a rare appreciation of the dynamics of the onshore Chinese upstream industry and from that basis a better understanding of what will be required, on a number of policy levels, for Chinese shale gas development to succeed.