“Natural gas will be strategic in energy transition”

The importance of natural gas in the years ahead has already been acknowledged by the International Energy Agency, which predicts a growth of 30% by 2040. At Galp, this topic is top priority, as Inês Santos, the company's director of Strategy, explained at the Green Gas Mobility Online Event

Galp's commitment to decarbonisation and the importance of natural gas in energy transition has already been extensively conveyed by the company that announced, back in 2019, that 40% of its investments in the next 10 years would be allocated to these goals. Hence, it is hardly surprising that, during her participation on one of the panels at the Green Gas Mobility Online Event organised by Gasnam, the Iberian Association of Natural Gas for Mobility, Inês Santos, director of Strategy at Galp, emphasised the essential role that natural gas represents in all the company´s projects and business areas. “Gas accounts for 25% of the weight of the primary energy mix matrix and will be strategic in energy transition”, she declared. As far as Galp's director of strategy is concerned, the decarbonisation of the electricity sector, replacing coal with natural gas, enables us to gain time to create the conditions for the massive influx of renewable energy sources, at competitive costs, while upholding the resilience and robustness of the energy system.

The investment policy followed by Galp, the leading player in the natural gas sector in Portugal, is consistent with the forecasts of the International Energy Agency, which also defends the major role this type of energy plays in relation to a reduction in CO2 emissions. Right now, argues Inês Santos, “replacing the entire coal generation fleet with natural gas would result in a 15% reduction in emissions, equivalent to the annual emissions figure for the entire USA”, she exemplifies.

The weight of industry and mobility

Industry currently accounts for around 30% of energy consumption worldwide, and a large part of this consumption cannot be electrified in a cost-effective manner.

This is the case, for example, in industries such as steel and glass, points out Inês Santos. Furthermore, she adds, “40% of emissions come from consumption in sectors bereft of the technology or business solutions to enable them to neutralise their carbon emissions”. Along with industry, the Galp director alludes to mobility, as both “require a quality of energy that is incompatible with the use of electricity for final consumption”. Moreover, she stresses that renewable gases will be essential for the decarbonisation of heavy, sea and even air transport using synthetic fuels, but that energy transition needs to be based on competition between technologies that contribute to a reduction in CO2 emissions, allowing for the optimisation of the use of resources in accordance with the characteristics of each solution and the specific needs of each use.

Asked about the role of green hydrogen, Inês Santos replies that Galp is “aware of long-term trends”, reinforcing that hydrogen has already been identified as “a critical uncertainty”. “We are assessing a project for the creation of an industrial green hydrogen cluster in Sines, which integrates and optimises the entire value chain, but with the inclusion of renewable electricity generation and the production, distribution, transportation, storage, sale and export of hydrogen”, she adds. As far as she is concerned, the topic of hydrogen in mobility is akin to what happened a few years ago with natural gas. “Everything depends on the infrastructure to be created based on partnerships that will gradually enable the market to be built up, once this technology has matured and is competitive with other options of decarbonisation”, she concludes.

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