Gas savings targets could be missed in cold winters

So far, Austria has achieved the goal and reduced its gas consumption – but also thanks to warm temperatures. According to Wifo, however, a cold winter could mean that the savings targets will not be met in the future.

According to a report by the economic research institute Wifo, Austria reduced its gas consumption by 17 percent between August and mid-December 2022, i.e. more than required by the EU. Since the beginning of the year, gas consumption has even been below the values ​​​​of the lockdown year 2020, as the report says. However, the months of October and November were particularly warm.

In order to find out how much of the savings are due to the warm temperatures, Wifo created a temperature-dependent gas consumption model from the data for the period 2015 to 2021 and used it to forecast consumption in 2022. According to Wifo, a comparison of the gas consumption forecast in this way with the actual consumption provides information on how much of the savings are due to warm temperatures.

According to this, the savings in total gas consumption in Austria, adjusted for the outside temperature, are only seven percent and thus below the EU target value. Even without generating electricity from gas, the savings are less than 10 percent. “This means that Austria will not reach the European target in an average cold winter, even if you factor out the higher gas consumption in electricity generation,” write the two authors Peter Reschenhofer from Wifo and Johannes Schmidt from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (Boku). .

Source: Nachrichten