Energy Reports (Jun 2024)
Natural gas consumption estimation in the European Union
Abstract
On 5 August 2022, the European Commission adopted the Regulation (EU) 2022/1369 on coordinated demand reduction measures for gas to decrease, on a voluntary basis, 15 % the gas consumption in the European Union (EU) over the period 1 August 2022 – 31 March 2023 compared to the previous five years. In 2023, the prolongation of this regulation was proposed until 31 March 2024 in order to save gas, facilitate the refilling of storages during the summer, and avoid exhaustion at the end of next winter. Thus, there is a need to monitor as closely as possible the natural gas consumption in the EU and keep track of the accumulated demand reduction for natural gas. However, the most up-to-date figures from the statistical office of the EU (Eurostat) are provided with a delay of one to two months and with coarse granularity (monthly). This paper (i) proposes a methodology to estimate the EU natural gas consumption with daily granularity, and (ii) presents two applications for monitoring the gas demand reduction with coarser granularity (weekly and monthly). The methodology, benchmark, and applications exclusively rely on publicly available sources such as Eurostat, the transparency platforms from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSOG), Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE), as well as ENaGaD. ENaGaD is the in-house Joint Research Centre’s database of time series of natural gas consumption of the EU Member States.
