The European Commission will next week provide members with voluntary gas reduction targets, according to a draft document seen by the Financial Times, which warns that the targets will become mandatory in the event of severe supply disruptions. “Joint action now will be less disruptive and costly, facilitating solidarity and avoiding the need for unplanned and uncoordinated actions later in a potential crisis situation with natural gas reserves running low,” the document said. The move comes as the International Energy Agency warned that efforts to diversify away from Russian gas were no longer enough on their own and that Europe faced an energy shortage unless demand was curbed to allow storage facilities to fill before winter. Russia last month cut capacity on its main pipeline to Germany and the IOC fears further cuts cannot be ruled out. Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said Europe was on “red alert” and that “significant additional reductions” were needed to “prepare Europe for a harsh winter ahead”. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, signed a supply deal with Azerbaijan on Monday that will increase deliveries to Europe by 48% this year and aims to double them by 2025, although Azeri imports are only a fraction of the EU as a whole. The central Asian country is one of several, including Qatar, the US, Israel and Nigeria, being courted by the EU as it seeks to secure alternatives to Russian supplies. Italy is also on the verge of boosting supplies from Algeria, with Italian energy company Eni and France’s TotalEnergies and Occidental signing a deal with Algeria’s Sonatrach on Tuesday for a new $4bn gas development project, the which will eventually bring new supplies. But the IOC, which acts as the West’s energy watchdog, said on Monday that efforts to boost supplies still fell short and the EU needed tougher measures, including curbing demand for air conditioners and auctioning gas supplies to industry . The committee’s draft document did not include exact figures, but these are expected to be finalized before the final publication of the proposal on Wednesday. The latest documents are a revision of a plan leaked last week that recommends limiting central heating and cooling in buildings, as well as exempting coal-fired power stations from emissions reduction targets. Diplomats and EU officials have been locked in talks over possible targets and how to implement them, given the different energy mixes of different member states. An EU official said negotiations were continuing on what sanctions could be imposed if the targets were made mandatory and not met. Europe previously relied on Russia for about 40 percent of its natural gas, but since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine those supplies have increasingly been used by Moscow in response to EU support for Kyiv.

Russia has already cut off supplies to the Baltic states, Finland, Poland and Bulgaria and reduced flows to Germany and Italy. In the draft plans, the Commission noted that in June gas flows from Russia to the EU fell to less than 30 percent of the average between 2016 and 2021. Europe imported a total of 155 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia in 2021 and consumes close to 400 bcm of gas in total in a normal year. The leaked gas plan warned that continued cuts to Russian gas supplies could cause EU GDP to fall by up to 1.5%, depending on the level of the disruption. The European Commission declined to comment. Von der Leyen said in a speech in Baku that the EU needed to “diversify itself from Russia and turn to more reliable, trustworthy suppliers” and described Azerbaijan as a “critical energy partner”. The plan is for Azerbaijan’s supplies to rise to 12 bcm this year, from 8.1 bcm in 2021, and eventually reach “at least” 20 bcm by 2027, according to a memorandum. The fuel will reach the EU via the South Gas Corridor pipeline, a joint project between Brussels and Baku that opened in 2018 and is mainly fed by gas fields in the Caspian Sea. But despite EU efforts to create a joint gas buying effort similar to the co-ordinated Covid vaccine market, officials admitted it was competing in a narrow market where countries already had long-term contracts. Additional reporting by Peggy Hollinger in London and Amy Kazmin in Rome