Prénom de l'expert

Sylvie

Nom de l'expert

CORNOT-GANDOLPHE

Surprising coal markets: while the world coal demand is diminishing, the steam coal price doubled in 2016. After five years of uninterrupted price decline and a sluggish world demand, this strong price hike might appear as paradoxical. This paper explains the principal reasons for this situation.

Southeast Asia is one of the world's most dynamic regions and experiences strong economic and energy demand growth rates. In this context, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is seeking to interconnect the electric grids and gas networks of the countries through two initiatives, the Asean Power Grid and the Trans-Asean Gas Pipeline, in order to pool resources and optimize energy markets integration in the region.

This study addresses the consequences of US Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports towards Europe, in particular on the strategy of Russia, the EU’s main gas supplier. 

Despite a landmark agreement on climate in December 2015, reducing the share of coal in the world energy mix will remain extremely difficult. This paper analyses five large consumers choices in terms of coal and clean coal technologies.

The EU gas policy has to deal with a new landscape on the supply and demand sides. This study examines five major recent evolutions of the EU gas market: the relations with Russia, LNG coming back to Europe, the decrease of Groningen production, the contrasted evolutions of shale gas and the perspectives of EU natural gas demand.

The European coal industry is at a crossroads. The European Commission (EC) Energy Policy by 2020, the 20/20/20 targets, is not favourable to coal:

a 20% decrease in CO₂ emissions does not favour coal compared with natural gas, its main competitor in electricity generation;

a 20% increase in energy efficiency will lead to a decrease in energy/coal consumption;

a 20% increase in renewables will displace other energy sources, including coal.

Over the past four years, international coal trade has been reshaped by China’s surging imports.