The European gas market has proved far more resilient to the immense political and security challenges it has faced since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 than many would have guessed. It was only two years ago that giving up the Russian pipeline habit seemed nigh-on impossible.
But the EU is not yet out of the woods: Maintaining Europe’s single gas market is likely to cost a lot more in the future. The EU system has already had to reconfigure itself around the loss of its largest source of supply. And as the transition from gas to greener alternatives gains pace, a shrinking pool of remaining customers will have to shoulder the cost of maintaining oversized gas grids.
To address these challenges and others, some of the network maintenance costs may have to be borne differently. Europe needs a way of avoiding the creation of a vicious circle in which system tariffs keep having to go up because fewer users are around to pay for them.