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Blocking Russian Gas Imports

Background

PyPSA-Eur's default methane network includes large pipeline import capacities for countries that historically received Russian gas — both via the Eastern European land corridor and via TurkStream (Bulgaria). Since 2022 these flows have been curtailed or fully stopped. PyPSA-AT reflects this geopolitical reality by zeroing out the affected pipeline import generators for the relevant planning horizons.

The two distinct corridors are treated separately because they have different start dates and different residual capacities:

  • Eastern border corridor — countries receiving Russian gas via Ukraine: Finland (FI), Estonia (EE), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Poland (PL), Slovakia (SK), Romania (RO). # Pipeline import capacity is set to zero from start_year onward.
  • TurkStream corridor — Bulgaria (BG) receives Russian gas via the Black Sea pipeline. Pipeline import capacity is reduced to the TANAP residual (~ 700 GWh/d), preserving Azerbaijani gas imports via the Trans-Anatolia Gas Pipeline (TANAP) that are independent of the Russian route. Source: ENTSO-G

end_years can be set for each corridor indivudally - reallowing the import of Russian pipeline gas from that year on.

Implementation

block_russian_gas_imports in mods/network/gas.py is called during the modify_prenetwork step. For each configured block:

  1. Check whether the current planning_horizons wildcard falls within [start_year, end_year]. Horizons outside this window are skipped.
  2. Filter the block's country list to countries present in config["countries"].
  3. Locate the generator named {cc} gas pipeline import for each active country.
  4. Set p_nom to the residual capacity (zero, or _TANAP_PIPELINE_CAPACITY for BG) and p_nom_extendable = False to prevent the optimizer from re-opening the route.

Defaults

Block Countries start_year end_year Residual capacity
eastern_border_block FI, EE, LV, LT, PL, SK, RO 2025 ∞ 0 MW
turkstream_block BG 2030 ∞ 29 258 MW (TANAP)

Configuration

In config/config.at.yaml under mods:

mods:
  block_russian_gas_imports:
    enable: true
    eastern_border_block:
      start_year: 2025
      countries: [FI, EE, LV, LT, PL, SK, RO]
    turkstream_block:
      start_year: 2030
      countries: [BG]

end_year is optional for both blocks and defaults to infinity (block never lifted). Set it to a specific year to model a scenario where imports resume:

    eastern_border_block:
      start_year: 2025
      end_year: 2040
      countries: [FI, EE, LV, LT, PL, SK, RO]

To disable the feature entirely, set enable: false.