The Russian invasion of Ukraine on a large scale of February 2022 caused an earthquake on European energy markets. Faced with the urgent need to diversify its natural gas supplies, the Union has found American liquefied natural gas (LNG) a providential solution. This major reorientation of European energy policy seemed to combine two main objectives: guaranteeing the security of energy supply and strengthening the transatlantic alliance. The urgency and amazement in the face of the geopolitical shock had relegated climatic questions to the background. At a time when the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, seems to want to further increase European purchases to anticipate the requirements of President Trump, it is necessary to examine the exorbitant climate cost of the American LNG.
A recent study Establish a systematic classification of intensity in greenhouse gas emissions of different sources of gas importation in Europe.
The analysis reveals that the American LNG presents the highest carbon footprint of all the gas supplies on the continent.
Its intensity in equivalent CO2 By unit of energy content exceeds 80 % that of Algerian gas which arrives in second position in this unlverary classification. Even more striking, gas ” made in USA Is 2.2 times more intensive in greenhouse gases than its Russian counterpart, which Europe seeks to replace.
This specificity of American LNG is explained by its production and routing mode.
The production of natural gas in the United States is now dominated by shale gas, the extraction of which requires the use of hydraulic fracturing. This technology is more likely to generate methane leaks than for conventional gas, especially due to defects which may appear on the formwork of well heads. If the exact level of these leaks has been the subject of intense debate in the late 2000s, recent measures tend to show that they would have been strongly underestimated by industry. Added to the emissions from extraction inevitable losses during liquefaction and transatlantic transport – for a particularly heavy complete carbon assessment.
By rushing under the American energy umbrella, Europe chooses to prolong its dependence on a fossil source of energy even less compatible with its climatic objectives than Russian gas was.
Aurélien Saussay
Considering the effects of methane on global warming to a twenty -year horizon, the use of American LNG in the electricity sector even generates emissions per KWH 33 % higher than those of coal .
This counter-intuitive result is explained by the very nature of methane, the main component of natural gas. Its power of warming, which is 82 to 84 times higher per tonne emitted than that of CO2 On this temporal horizon, weighs heavily in the scale. Even after a hundred years, methane is no longer “only” 25 times more powerful than CO2 – And the American LNG retains an unfavorable carbon assessment compared to coal.
Natural gas had to offer transition energy in the European trajectory towards the zero -emission target of 2050. Its lowest carbon intensity, half a half to that of coal, was to make it possible to establish a bridge to the 100 % decarbon electric mixes provided for the second half of the century. This strategy becomes completely illusory if this bridge is ultimately to rest on a fleet of Lightners parked across the Atlantic.
Without even considering this specificity of the American LNG, the union seems to have to import more liquefied natural gas than our climatic objectives allow us.
The Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) demonstrated a few months ago That the volumes of already contracted already exceed almost 40 % the natural gas requirements compatible with the objective of carbon neutrality in 2050. The imbalance would appear in 2027, with an import of imports of 30 billion cubic meters of LNG. This excess volume would reach 41 billion cubic meters in 2030 – which is greater than the annual consumption of gas from France.
These projections are based on the repuowreu decarbonation scenario, which provides for a gradual reduction in European natural gas demand. Even if this drop in consumption did not materialize so quickly, the conclusion remains: the union has already taken out excessive LNG import commitments with regard to its climatic objectives. To engage today in an increase in the importation of American LNG is therefore not only to yield to the asymmetrical requirements of the American president – this would especially mean the end of the European ecological project.
The Union has already taken out excessive LNG import commitments with regard to its climatic objectives.
Aurélien Saussay
All of these volumes could, in theory, be redirected to other markets. They correspond to contracts ” Free-on-board Which offer a certain flexibility in the final destination of the cargoes. Far from proposing a new increase in our IML imports, the Commission could on the contrary use the reduction of our existing import contracts as a negotiation lever with the new American administration – in particular to counter its climate disengagement strategy.
This situation is symptomatic of tensions that cross European energy policy.
The need for Freeing himself with Russian gas after the invasion of Ukraine was obviousand cannot be questioned. But by rushing under the American energy umbrella, Europe chooses to prolong its dependence on a fossil source of energy even less compatible with its climatic objectives than Russian gas was.
The European trilemma has posed with even more emergency since Donald Trump’s return to the White House: how to guarantee our energy security without compromising the decarbonation of our economy or limiting the availability of inexpensive energy for the entire population and European industry?
The answer can only come from an even more marked acceleration from the development of renewable energies – and, if the promise to reduce costs was finally held with EPR 2, nuclear. They alone will structurally reduce dependence on gas imports, whatever the origin. For Europe, the only great power to have no reserve of significant fossil energy on its territory, the energy transition is the keystone of its geopolitical transition: not only a climate imperative – but especially the key strategy to give body to strategic autonomy.
