King's College London

Research co-authored by King’s academic Adnan Vatansever and Andreas Goldthau (University of Erfut) argues that even if a peace deal is eventually reached, a large-scale return of Russian gas to the continent is highly improbable – though not impossible.

The analysis, published in Resources Policy, uses a new framework to explain why European countries built such a heavy reliance on Russian gas over decades and why their responses to the energy crisis have varied so significantly. The researchers identify three key factors: sunk costs in gas infrastructure, the power of incumbent energy companies, and the prevailing political ideology around energy regulation.

Countries like Germany and Italy, with high sunk costs and powerful gas incumbents, significantly increased their dependence on Russia throughout the 2010s. Conversely, nations like Poland, which invested in LNG terminals, managed to diversify their supplies earlier.

Since the war, all three factors have shifted decisively against Russian gas. Europe has rapidly built new LNG infrastructure, weakened the influence of gas incumbents tied to Russia, and accelerated its green transition with more ambitious decarbonisation targets. While countries like Hungary and Greece have maintained imports, the overall trend is a continent-wide structural break from dependence on Russia.

The study concludes that, while the demise of Russian gas in Europe is “not a foregone conclusion”, the longer political tensions persist, the more entrenched new energy pathways will become, making a return to pre-2022 import levels increasingly unlikely.

You can read the study in full here: The political economy of breaking European dependence on Russian gas. And there is more from the study authors here: Will Russian Gas Return to Europe?