Even if Russian gas supplies via Ukraine were to fail completely, Austria would survive a winter – even a particularly cold one, E-Control assures. The gas storage facilities are said to be almost one-fifth full. With average temperatures and stable Russian supplies, storage facilities will be two-thirds full by the end of the heating season.
Since the Russian attack on Ukraine, replacing Russian gas has been a high priority. At the EU level, about a third of gas consumption came through Russian pipelines in 2021, E-Control board member Alfons Haber said on Thursday. In 2023, this number was around eight percent.
“Gas market completely turned upside down”
In recent years, the gas market has been “completely turned upside down”. Gas flows in the Austrian transport network and in the EU have changed significantly and sustainably since February 2022. Austria has largely lost its role as a transit country and is dependent on transit through Germany and Italy to secure supplies in the event of a disruption in Russian gas supplies.
Of the approximately 77 terawatt hours (TWh) of natural gas in domestic storage, more than a third belongs to non-Austrian customers. A quarter of the storage volume (19.46 TWh) is accounted for by the strategic gas reserve.
Power supply assured, but the picture changes enormously
The power supply in Austria is also currently safe, E-Control says in its annual monitoring report. However, in 2030, the power plant landscape will look completely different than it does today: “Photovoltaic and wind power plants will account for around 50 percent, while run-of-river and storage plants will account for another third. Existing thermal power plants account for about 15 percent. “In total there will be about 41 gigawatts (about 24 GW in 2021) of installed capacity,” Haber explains the plans.
According to E-Control, the power plant’s production has increased significantly over the past two years. In 2022, a net 1,256 gigawatts of electricity will have been added. Photovoltaics (PV) accounted for one gigawatt of the expansion, wind power increased by 200 megawatts (MW), followed by run-of-river power plants with about 130, storage plants with about 50 and biomass with about 20 MW. At the same time, approximately 170 MW of fossil thermal power plants were closed.
Consumption fell slightly, mainly due to households
Electricity consumption fell by 1.8 percent to 63.3 TWh in 2022, with the decline mainly attributable to households. Including the electricity that consumers collect with their own PV systems, consumption was 66 TWh.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
