Paris(People's Daily) - The COVID-19 pandemic represents the biggest shock to the global energy system in more than seven decades, with the drop in demand this year set to dwarf the impact of the 2008 financial crisis and result in a record annual decline in carbon emissions of almost 8%.
(File photo from weibo)
A new report released today by the International Energy Agency provides an almost real-time view of the Covid-19 pandemic's extraordinary impact across all primary fuels. Based on an analysis of more than 100 days of real data so far this year, the IEA's Global Energy Review includes estimates for how energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions trends are likely to evolve over the rest of 2020.
"This is a historical shock to the entire energy world. Amid today's unparalleled health and eco-nomic crises, the plunge in demand for nearly all major fuels is staggering, especially for coal, oil, and gas. Only renewables are holding up during the previously unheard-of slump in electricity use," said Dr. Fatih Birol, the IEA Executive Director. "It is still too early to determine the longer-term im-pacts, but the energy industry that emerges from this crisis will be significantly different from the one that came before."
The Global Energy Review's projections of energy demand and energy-related emissions for 2020 are based on assumptions that the lockdowns imple-mented around the world in response to the pan-demic are progressively eased in most countries in the coming months, accompanied by a gradual economic recovery.
The report projects that energy demand will fall 6% in 2020 – seven times the decline after the 2008 global financial crisis. In absolute terms, the drop is unprecedented – the equivalent of losing the entire energy demand of India, the world's third-largest energy consumer. Advanced economies are ex-pected to see the most significant declines, with demand set to fall by 9% in the United States and by 11% in the European Union. The impact of the crisis on energy demand is heavily dependent on the duration and stringency of measures to curb the spread of the virus. For instance, the IEA found that each month of worldwide lockdown at the lev-els seen in early April reduces annual global ener-gy demand by about 1.5%.
Changes to electricity use during lockdowns have resulted in significant declines in overall electricity demand, with consumption levels and patterns on weekdays looking like those of a pre-crisis Sunday. Full lockdowns have pushed down electricity de-mand by 20% or more, with lesser impacts from partial lockdowns. Electricity demand is set to de-cline by 5% in 2020, the largest drop since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
At the same time, lockdown measures are driving a significant shift towards low-carbon sources of electricity, including wind, solar PV, hydropower, and nuclear. After overtaking coal for the first time in 2019, low-carbon sources are set to extend their lead this year to reach 40% of global electricity generation – 6 percentage points ahead of coal. Electricity generation from wind and solar PV con-tinues to increase in 2020, lifted by new projects that were completed in 2019 and early 2020.
This trend is affecting the demand for electricity from coal and natural gas, which are finding them-selves increasingly squeezed between low overall power demand and increasing output from renewa-bles. As a result, the combined share of gas and coal in the global power mix is set to drop by three percentage points in 2020 to a level not seen since 2001.
Coal is particularly hard hit, with global demand projected to fall by 8% in 2020, the largest decline since the Second World War. Following its 2018 peak, coal-fired power generation is set to fall by more than 10% this year.