Probably not as much, but I expect Europe will still use winter peaking plants for a good while.
this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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In the context of a massive build-out of LNG export capacity, this implies a huge marketing effort by the fossil fuels industry to addict new users to it
The US is planning to increase its current LNG capacity by 5x, it's completely insane. The fossil fuel industry is too big and powerful for the government to have any chance to set any reasonable limits. Any talk of slightly slowing down LNG buildout is met with far-right hysteria.
They're successfully capping the size of the LNG buildout though.
This is basically a bet by the fossil fuels industry that as the US decarbonizes, they'll be able to export instead of leaving oil and gas in the ground.
Is that from fracking output?
Love climate Town
Sure, but LNG is more expensive then pipeline gas and Europe has some reserves in Norway and gas pipelines to Northern Africa, Central Asia and somewhat the Middle East. That means as soon as Russian gas supply becomes zero, the US LNG supply to Europe is going to decrease.
There is also a lot of gas storage in the EU, which is meant mainly to work for the seasonal demand changes coming from heating with gas. Since wind is stronger in the North Sea region in winter, that means besides some non windy days, peaker plants will be used less and less. Grid sized battery storage and better grids are really being deployed relativly quickly, so that should fall as well. The big question is how quickly gas consumption is going to decline as most European countries focus more on shutting down coal power plants.
That Germany only built temporary docking stations for ship based LNG terminals and AFAIK is not inclined to invest further into that should be a clear indication that they consider it only a stop gap measure.