Role of scenarios in the TYNDP

The resilience of the European gas system is ­dependent on the future development of the gas demand and the gas supply. As the conventional Natural Gas indigenous production is declining in Europe, the infrastructure will be exposed to different stress cases depending on the decarbonisation pathways and therefore how the demand will evolve and where the new renewable and decarbonised gases will develop over time. By building different and contrasted scenarios, ENTSOG, jointly with ENTSOE, make it possible to assess the infrastructure needs for contrasted situations with the aim of encompassing all possible developments and ­delivering the most comprehensive assessment of the European gas system.

National Trends, the policy scenario

In the National Trends scenario, the development of the gas demand follows the recommendation of the National Energy and Climate Plans of the respective Member States. In general, the overall gas demand for final use generally decreases over time while the gas demand for power increases, partly resulting from the coal to gas switch in the power sector. On the production side, the European natural gas production is declining and biomethane and, to a limited extent, power to gas production is developing. However, the development of renewable gases is not sufficient to compensate the decline of the ­conventional gas production and Europe relies more and more on imports. Therefore, the use of the gas infrastructure is based on the principle of main supply corridors to satisfy the European gas demand.

The Distributed Energy scenario considers the ­decarbonisation of the European energy system from a distributed and local perspective. The gas demand reflects an evolution of the energy demand towards higher electrification and locally produced energy. Therefore, the gas imports are decreasing, and gas flows are less following the traditional ­import supply corridors but also new ­intra-European routes from areas with a high potential of renewable gas production.

The Global Ambition scenario considers the decarbonisation of the European energy system as part as a global transition where Europe produces ­indigenous renewable and decarbonised gases in a more centralised way with large scale solutions and also participates to a global market of renewable and decarbonised gases resulting in a relatively higher import share and a use of the infrastructure being a combination of import routes and new ­intra-European routes to transport renewable and decarbonised gases produced locally.