Summary

Europe as a major energy consumer faces a number of challenges when addressing future energy needs. Among these challenges are a rapidly rising global demand and competition for energy resources from emerging economies such as China and India, persistent instability in energy producing regions such as the Middle East, a fragmented internal European energy market, and a growing need to shift fuels in order to address climate change policy. As a result, energy supply security has become a key concern for European nations and the European Union (EU). This book focuses on potential approaches that Europe might employ to diversify its sources of natural gas supply, and Russia's role, as well as identifying some of the issues hindering efforts to develop alternative suppliers of natural gas.