Energy crisis

 

The fact that the ongoing war in Ukraine will not soon go to an end is well known, unfortunately. And this indicates that EU countries can't continue to be reliant on Russian gas. With more than 22% of the world electricity generation coming from gas, many depeloped and developing countries are still reliant on such fossil resource.  In addition to power plants, another huge quantity of world gas production is used for other purposes, such as urban utilities, service sector, and industrial use.  In this perspective, the demand for LNG has grown exponentially in many countries, such as China and India. On the other hand, gas consuption has been decreasing sharply in some countries, like Japan and South Korea, due to the reopening of nuclear power plants. Actually, such countries have been implementing a policy of energy conservation. 

In the late 1960s, after the discovery of the Yamburg gas-fields in West Siberia, which is the world third largest one, Austria became the first European country to sign a long-term gas supply deal with Russians. We have to consider the fact that Austria was, and still is, both landlocked and neutral from a geopolitical point of view. Since then, Russian gas has been attractive to Europe because of its availability. Moreover, it was cheaper and easy to transport from West Siberia to Central Europe. That's way its importance have been growing in the last three decades, as some EU countries moved to end coal and nuclear power plant production.

Now EU countries are going to increase purchases of liquefied natural gas from other producers, as they are compelled to replace Europe's import of Russian gas. Moreover, as we have already seen since early this year, the wars have been fought differently: on 18 February 2022 and on 27 September 2022 three Russian gas pipelines were damaged by explosions. The military operations just mentioned interrupted the gas delivery to many EU countries.

But, as it is known, the EU isn't yet equiped to replace Russian gas entirely. And in this perspective, Southern Europe's territory is so important for supply of gas to EU countries, because of its geographical location. In addition to the Trans-Mediterranean Pipeline, which already delivers Algerian gas to mainland Italy and Slovenia (through Tunisia and the island of Sicily), a shelved gas pipeline is under construction. It would link gas from Algeria to Italy via the island of Sardinia. Not to mention of the Trans Saharian gas pipeline that will be then connected to the existing pipelines that already run to Europe. The Southern Gas Corridor also delivers gas to Europe from the Caspian area (Azerbaijan). It connects the Trans Anatolian pipeline at the Turkish-Greek border, crosses Greece, Albania and the Adriatic sea, before coming ashore in South Italy.

This mean that we have to switch to renewable energy as soon as we can: experts of the Snam SpA, an Italian energy infrasctucture company, say that the amount of energy that hit our planet in an hour is enough to meet global energy needs for an entire year. But while world population has reached 7 billion, current technologies don't allow for huge harnessing of this potential yet. 

Sources: 

https://www.offshore-technology.com/

https://www.agenzianova.com/

https://www.tap-ag.com/

https://www.inspirecleanenergy.com/

https://www1.cbn.com/

https://www.snamatlas.it/