Resilience indicators for the EU natural gas system

The European Union’s natural gas policy has undergone a profound transformation since the energy crisis began in 2021. In response to supply disruptions and price volatility, policymakers swiftly expanded the existing 2017 security of supply framework by introducing a series of new regulations, aiming to provide a swift and coordinated EU reaction to the gas crisis. They supplemented the existing strategies of diversifying supply and improving infrastructure with several new measures, including optimizing storage utilization, reducing gas demand, and enhancing cooperation and solidarity among EU Member States. Four years after the start of the crisis, the natural gas system has stabilized to a new status quo, providing an opportunity to retrospectively analyze the system’s resilience to shocks. In this paper, we present the EU’s natural gas policy since the First Gas Directive, providing context and highlighting measurable policy targets. Based on this policy context, we then identify metrics to evaluate the resilience of the EU natural gas system from the perspectives of supply, demand, infrastructure, and prices. Finally, we analyze publicly available datasets on these resilience indicators to evaluate whether the system’s development over time aligns with the outcomes intended by policy and we demonstrate the suitability of these indicators to evaluate EU policy response and implementation. We conclude that the general development was in line with the intended policy trends.