Version 1
: Received: 14 July 2020 / Approved: 16 July 2020 / Online: 16 July 2020 (13:41:22 CEST)
How to cite:
Meza, C.G.; Amado, N.B.; Sauer, I. How the COVID-19 Crisis is Showing Us the Complexities in the Global Energy Transition. Preprints2020, 2020070361. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202007.0361.v1
Meza, C.G.; Amado, N.B.; Sauer, I. How the COVID-19 Crisis is Showing Us the Complexities in the Global Energy Transition. Preprints 2020, 2020070361. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202007.0361.v1
Meza, C.G.; Amado, N.B.; Sauer, I. How the COVID-19 Crisis is Showing Us the Complexities in the Global Energy Transition. Preprints2020, 2020070361. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202007.0361.v1
APA Style
Meza, C.G., Amado, N.B., & Sauer, I. (2020). How the COVID-19 Crisis is Showing Us the Complexities in the Global Energy Transition. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202007.0361.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Meza, C.G., Nilton Bispo Amado and Ildo Sauer. 2020 "How the COVID-19 Crisis is Showing Us the Complexities in the Global Energy Transition" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202007.0361.v1
Abstract
The measures for tackling the COVID-19 may shrink the global GDP by approximately 6% in 2020, the deepest post-war recession. As a result, the global energy demand declined by 3.8% in the first quarter of 2020. Concerning fossil fuels, this conjuncture reduced the demand drastically and collapsed the prices to historic levels. Despite the general market disruptions, renewable energy sources (RES) seem to be more resilient to the crisis because they are the only sources that will grow in demand in 2020, driven by priority dispatch. The RES´s significant growth in cumulative installed capacity in the last two decades and the significant cost reductions of RES and energy storage technologies are positive signs towards better market conditions for the global energy transition. Currently, the crisis is seen by international agencies and transition scholars as an opportunity to advance a renewable-based energy transformation. Nevertheless, this article aims at caution about another possibility: if societal changes are not urgently implemented, the crisis may weaken the global energy transition. This article examines this last possibility from a three-level perspective: 1) post-COVID economic recovery, 2) low oil and natural gas prices and competitiveness of alternative sources and, 3) reorganization of the world energy market and the OPEC+. This paper exists to stimulate debate.
Keywords
renewable energy; decarbonization; fossil fuels; energy transition; COVID-19; sustainability
Subject
Business, Economics and Management, Economics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
