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Analyst: Europe's dependence on gas brings important price changes in any supply limitation
Europe's dependence on natural gas, as high as before the crisis, brings important price changes to any supply limitation, says Dumitru Chisalita, chairman of the Smart Energy Association (AEI) in an analysis sent on Tuesday.
"Europe's dependence on energy imports has not changed significantly in recent years, with Europe remaining heavily dependent on energy imports. An incident at a gas pipeline in Norway has caused important price changes on the stock exchanges, just as it happened before the crisis in the case of interruption of gas exports from Russia. An analysis of Eurostat data shows that the measures taken lately have not significantly changed Europe's level of energy security, replacing dependence on Russia with dependence on other countries. It can be seen that dependence on energy imports from Russia has decreased three times, but it has not been completely offset. There is a false idea that the gas crisis has caused a radical change in the energy market and gas has been left aside. In fact, statistics show us that things are not like that at all," says Chisalita.
At the same time, dependence on coal in the EU increased in 2021 and 2022, with the restart of some coal-fired power plants following the gas crisis, and later returned to the level of 2019. The smallest decrease in dependence on imports from Russia is at the level of coal, which decreased by only 6%.
"Island countries are among the top energy-dependent countries, and at the opposite pole is Romania (the 4th least energy dependent country in the EU), ahead of Sweden, Estonia and Iceland."
Romania is the country least dependent on imported gas and the second country least dependent on the import of petroleum products.
"These data show the importance of secure energy in the functioning of Europe and even more so of natural gas in this construction, which should be an important lesson for public policies and should determine rapid adaptability in order to avoid some of the future energy crises that are looming, ahead."