05.09.2024
The Initiative Energien Speichern e.V. (INES) today presented the September update on the association's own gas scenarios. The previous outlook remains mostly unchanged.
INES presented an outlook for the coming winter 2024/2025 for the first time in the July update. The outlook described therein is once again confirmed by the September update. Gas storage facilities will be emptied moderately to comprehensively in normal to warm temperatures. If extremely cold temperatures occur in winter, the gas storage facilities will be completely emptied by the beginning of February 2025. If no increased conservation measures are taken in the event of extremely cold temperatures, the gas consumption that then occurs could probably no longer be fully covered.
INES Managing Director Sebastian Heinermann comments on the September update of the INES gas scenarios as follows: “The gas storage level exceeded 95% on the morning of September 3, 2024. This means that the legal filling level target for November was reached even earlier than last year. At the current filling level, winter preparations can be considered to be well advanced. In view of the price spreads for the next two storage years, however, the question arises as to whether the market signals will continue to provide sufficient incentives for the market to ensure that filling complies with the law. We will monitor this accordingly over the coming weeks and months.”
BACKGROUND TO THE INES GAS SCENARIOS:
INES continuously models the European gas markets in order to assess the security of gas supply. On this basis and taking into account the storage levels as of September 1st, 2024, three scenarios for the gas supply in Germany in summer 2024 and winter 2024/2025 were considered:
The INES scenarios for the gas supply in winter 2024/2025 were presented for the first time in the July update. The September update now available updates this scenario outlook.
During the "summer phase", INES only publishes updates to the INES gas scenarios every two months. In winter, updates are published monthly. The next update is scheduled for November, 14th, 2024.
A detailed description of the scenarios and results can be found in the comprehensive documentation. A set of slides is also available which clearly presents the key content of the documentation. Since the February update, no more press conferences have been held to explain the gas scenarios in more detail. Previous press conferences on the gas scenarios have been recorded and can be viewed on the INES YouTube channel. The publication of the updates remains unaffected.
You can call up current information on gas storage levels in Germany and in the individual federal states at any time via the INES storage map. In addition, storage data can be filtered not only according to different storage types (cavern and pore storage) but also according to gas quality (L/H gas and hydrogen).