14.05.2024
INES has published the May update on the association's own gas scenarios. Due to very warm temperatures last winter, gas storage levels in Germany are well above average. The further drop in gas consumption in the summer means that they can be filled to capacity again before the coming winter of 2024/2025.
The new storage year began on April 1, 2024. The gas scenarios of the Initiative Energien Speichern e.V. (INES) show that the injection phase also began with the start of the storage year. In April 2024, more gas was injected into storage facilities in Germany than was withdrawn from them on a monthly average for the first time this year.
Compared to historical data, the gas storage facilities had a far above-average fill level of 67 percent as of May 1, 2024. The low gas withdrawals are due to very warm temperatures last winter. Not only were all monthly average temperatures last winter above the normal temperature scenario, in October and December in 2023 and in February and March 2024 they were even above the warm temperatures assumed for the scenario calculation.
As gas consumption has now almost been reduced to the temperature-independent share, it is once again possible to completely fill the gas storage facilities before the coming winter of 2024/2025, regardless of the assumed temperature levels in all gas scenarios.
INES Managing Director Sebastian Heinermann summarizes the May update as follows: "Last year, the gas storage facilities entered May with a fill level of 67%. In view of the INES gas scenarios and the experience gained last year, we can assume that the gas storage facilities can be filled to 100% again this year. The European gas system has sufficient capacity to fill the gas storage facilities in Germany completely once again."
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 at May 1st, 2024, three scenarios for the gas supply in Germany in the remainder of winter 2024 and summer 2024 were considered:
The INES scenarios for gas supply in winter 2023/24 were supplemented for the first time in the January update with an outlook for summer 2024 and updated for the remainder of winter 2024. With the May update, the regular update was carried out taking into account the data situation up to the end of the previous month of April.
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 July 10th, 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.