Increasing the EU’s Energy Independence

The report analyzes how the EU 28 can decrease its reliance on natural gas imports through cost-effective energy efficiency and renewable energy deployment across the buildings, industry, and energy supply sectors. It argues that these measures can reduce the share of natural gas in primary energy demand to 16% by 2030, significantly outperforming the European Commission's proposed 2030 framework.

• Between 1990 and 2012, the EU's natural gas net import dependency rose from 45% to 66%, driven by a more than 30% increase in demand and a 19% decrease in domestic production.
• The building sector is the largest consumer of natural gas in the EU, accounting for 39% of total consumption in 2012. Cost-effective efficiency improvements and renewable energy could reduce its natural gas demand by more than 3 EJ by 2030 compared to business-as-usual (BAU), a 58% reduction relative to 2012 levels.
• In the industrial sector, which accounted for 23% of natural gas consumption in 2012, energy efficiency and renewable energy measures could reduce natural gas demand by 0.7 EJ by 2030, representing over 20% of current industrial natural gas demand.
• The energy supply sector, the second largest natural gas consumer (30% of total consumption in 2012), could see natural gas demand reduced by 1.9 EJ through efficiency gains in other sectors and a further 1.5 EJ through the growth of renewable electricity.
• Implementing combined energy efficiency and renewable energy measures could reduce the share of natural gas in the EU's total primary energy supply from 25% under BAU to 16% (9.4 EJ) by 2030, a reduction of 9 percentage points.
• The report estimates that energy-related greenhouse gas emissions could be cut by 53% compared to 1990 levels if the outlined measures are implemented, which is 9 percentage points lower than the target of the 2030 framework for climate and energy policy.
• Domestic natural gas production in the EU is expected to decline significantly, with the Netherlands and UK projected to see production decreases of 70% and 50% respectively by 2030. Shale gas is expected to play only a minor role, supplying less than 1% of primary energy in 2030.

APA

van Breevoort, P., Hagemann, M., Höhne, N., Day, T., & de Vos, R. (2014). Increasing the EU’s Energy Independence. World Resources Institute. https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/uploads/ecofys-2014-increasing-eu-s-energy-independence-technical-report.pdf

Chicago

van Breevoort, Pieter, Markus Hagemann, Niklas Höhne, Thomas Day, and Rolf de Vos. Increasing the EU’s Energy Independence. World Resources Institute, 2014. https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/uploads/ecofys-2014-increasing-eu-s-energy-independence-technical-report.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{vanbreevoort2014increasing, author = {van Breevoort, Pieter and Hagemann, Markus and Höhne, Niklas and Day, Thomas and de Vos, Rolf}, title = {{Increasing the EU’s Energy Independence}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2014}, month = oct, url = {https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/uploads/ecofys-2014-increasing-eu-s-energy-independence-technical-report.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }