Global energy demand to plunge this year as a result of the biggest shock since the Second World War
Energy and Transportation
IEA: 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%.
Please note: The Report can be read in full at the bottom of this post.
In response to the exceptional circumstances stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, the annual IEA Global Energy Review has expanded its coverage to include real-time analysis of developments to date in 2020 and possible directions for the rest of the year
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 major 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 historic shock to the entire energy world. Amid today's unparalleled health and economic 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 impacts, 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 implemented around the world in response to the pandemic 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 decline is unprecedented – the equivalent of losing the entire energy demand of India, the world's third largest energy consumer. Advanced economies are expected to see the biggest 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 levels seen in early April reduces annual global energy 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 demand by 20% or more, with lesser impacts from partial lockdowns. Electricity demand is set to decline by 5% in 2020, the largest drop since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
At the same time, lockdown measures are driving a major shift towards low-carbon sources of electricity including wind, solar PV, hydropower and nuclear. After overtaking coal for the first time ever 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 continues to increase in 2020, lifted by new projects that were completed in 2019 and early 2020.
This trend is affecting demand for electricity from coal and natural gas, which are finding themselves increasingly squeezed between low overall power demand and increasing output from renewables. As a result, the combined share of gas and coal in the global power mix is set to drop by 3 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.
After 10 years of uninterrupted growth, natural gas demand is on track to decline 5% in 2020. This would be the largest recorded year-on-year drop in consumption since natural gas demand developed at scale during the second half of the 20th century. The massive impact of the crisis on oil demand has already been covered in detail in our April Oil Market Report.
Renewables are set to be the only energy source that will grow in 2020, with their share of global electricity generation projected to jump thanks to their priority access to grids and low operating costs. Despite supply chain disruptions that have paused or delayed deployment in several key regions this year, solar PV and wind are on track to help lift renewable electricity generation by 5% in 2020, aided by higher output from hydropower.
"This crisis has underlined the deep reliance of modern societies on reliable electricity supplies for supporting healthcare systems, businesses and the basic amenities of daily life," said Dr Birol. "But nobody should take any of this for granted – greater investments and smarter policies are needed to keep electricity supplies secure."
Despite the resilience of renewables in electricity generation in 2020, their growth is set to be lower than in previous years. Nuclear power, another major source of low-carbon electricity, is on track to drop by 3% this year from the all-time high it reached in 2019. And renewables outside the power sector are faring less well. Global demand for biofuels is set to fall substantially in 2020 as restrictions on transport and travel reduce road transport fuel demand, including for blended fuels.
As a result of these trends – mainly the declines in coal and oil use – global energy-related CO2 emissions are set to fall by almost 8% in 2020, reaching their lowest level since 2010. This would be the largest decrease in emissions ever recorded – nearly six times larger than the previous record drop of 400 million tonnes in 2009 that resulted from the global financial crisis.
"Resulting from premature deaths and economic trauma around the world, the historic decline in global emissions is absolutely nothing to cheer," said Dr Birol. "And if the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis is anything to go by, we are likely to soon see a sharp rebound in emissions as economic conditions improve. But governments can learn from that experience by putting clean energy technologies – renewables, efficiency, batteries, hydrogen and carbon capture – at the heart of their plans for economic recovery. Investing in those areas can create jobs, make economies more competitive and steer the world towards a more resilient and cleaner energy future."
Source: IEA
Breakthroughs in New Edge Science and Holistic Management : Perfect Together
Utilizing Holistic Decision making to solve our on-going crises
This paper compares job creation per dollar from various types of green investments vs. unsustainable investments. It also explores how to promote good jobs that have fair wages, job security, opportunities for career growth, safe working conditions, and are accessible for all.
Source: World Resource Institute
Joel Jaeger, Ginette Walls, Ella Clarke, Juan-Carlos Altamirano, Arya Harsono, Helen Mountford, Sharan Burrow, Samantha Smith and Alison Tate
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused millions of jobs to be lost globally and has exacerbated inequality. At the same time, addressing climate change is an urgent challenge. Too many governments have funneled money to unsustainable sectors as part of their COVID-19 recovery efforts even though this is not the best job creator and will exacerbate climate change.
This analysis of studies from around the world finds that green investments generally create more jobs per US$1 million than unsustainable investments. It compares near-term job creation effects from clean energy vs. fossil fuels, public transportation vs. roads, electric vehicles vs. internal combustion engine vehicles, and nature-based solutions vs. oil and gas production.
For example, on average:
Investing in solar PV creates 1.5 times as many jobs as fossil fuels per $1 million.
Building efficiency creates 2.8 times as many jobs as fossil fuels per $1 million.
Mass transit creates 1.4 times as many jobs as road construction per $1 million.
Ecosystem restoration creates 3.7 times as many jobs as oil & gas production per $1 million.
The paper also explores job quality in green sectors. In developing countries, green jobs can offer good wages when they are formal, but too many are informal and temporary, limiting access to work security, safety and social protections. In developed countries, new green jobs can provide avenues to the middle class, but may have wages and benefits that aren't as high as those in traditional sectors where, in many cases, workers have been able to fight for job quality through decades of collective action.
Government investment should come with conditions that ensure fair wages and benefits, work security, safe working conditions, opportunities for training and advancement, the right to organize, and accessibility to all.
This paper is jointly published by WRI, the International Trade Union Confederation, and New Climate Economy.
"If there is gas collusion in Chile, then distribution should be done by a public company": Sector workers
Chile. "If there is gas collusion, then distribution should be done by a public company": Sector workers
10.10.21 – Santiago de Chile – Redacción Chile
Patricio Tapia and Solange Bustos (Image by Andrés Figueroa Cornejo)
Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), as well as Natural Gas (NG) is imported to Chile mainly from Argentina and the United States through the sea. It arrives in the country at two regasification plants: the one in Quintero and the one in Mejillones, where it is processed and introduced into cylinders for domestic consumption. However, only three companies monopolise gas distribution, of which Metrogas, owned by Gasco S.A., has more than half of the market.
By Andrés Figueroa Cornejo
After recently issuing a study of high social impact, the Economic Prosecutor's Office (FNE) detected serious irregularities in the gas distribution industry, among whose assertions is that the retail price of each cylinder of liquefied gas should be 15% lower than the current one, and the price of natural gas paid by Metrogas users should be 20% cheaper.
The National Economic Prosecutor, Ricardo Riesco, said, "This study confirms that the gas market is not sufficiently competitive and our recommendations seek to change this situation as soon as possible for the benefit of consumers, because we are convinced that prices can be significantly lower in the future if regulation is adjusted".
The Preliminary Report of its sixth Market Study, where the FNE addressed the gas market in Chile in the period between 2010 and 2020, focused on the social groups that use liquefied petroleum gas and natural gas.
To develop the study, the FNE collected unpublished data on the gas market in the country and was advised by academics Juan Pablo Montero, from the Catholic University of Chile, and Eduardo Saavedra, from the Alberto Hurtado University, as well as Oxford University economist Christopher Decker.
The FNE calculated that, due to the concentration of the LPG market, private wholesale distributors of this energy increased their annual profits by up to 55% more than those obtained in 2014, which is equivalent to US$ 261 million "extra" annual profits.
On the other hand, the Prosecutor's Office detected that an exception contained in the last reform to the Gas Services Law, in June 2017, allowed Metrogas, through Agesa, a company not subject to regulation, to increase the price of its NG distribution service to consumers.
This resulted, since February 2017, in an increase of up to 20% in the price of residential natural gas paid by Metrogas customers, equivalent to US$ 87 million per year.
The case of Gasco S.A.
The Gasco corporation, harshly treated by the National Economic Prosecutor's Office along with Lipigas and Abastible, and company that takes the majority share of the business, said that the proposal of the entity, "could end up seriously damaging the quality of service and also the price of gas in the country", without offering any explanation of how and why it shot up prices.
On the other hand, Patricio Tapia Gómez and Solange Bustos, leaders of the Sindicato Nacional Interempresa de Trabajadores del Gas, were the ones who led the 21-day strike of the Gasco LPG Workers' Union, from 19 December 2017 to 8 January 2018. It was a historic strike because it was the first and only one so far in the more than 160 years of existence of the company.
The president of the company, then and now, is Matías Pérez Cruz, a staunch pinochetista, anti-unionist, fan of the neo-fascist presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, and who became infamous on 6 February 2019 when a video went viral showing him expelling three women in an arrogant and violent manner from what he called "his garden", on the shores of Lake Ranco.
Now, the leaders pointed out that, "Unlike the state's public health system, when a person stops paying the gas bill, the company immediately shuts off the supply. What happens then? When private gas corporations cut off the gas for non-payment, they simply cease to be "strategic companies". In other words, they lose their status as an "essential company" that provides a "basic service of public utility". Where the market rules, there are no more "strategic basic services", because in the case of gas, it is a product that only those who have the means to buy it can buy. Its supply is not guaranteed as a social right. Moreover, if someone cannot buy gas from a private company "A", they can buy it from company "B", because in Chile there is supposed to be free competition".
Patricio Tapia and Solange Bustos, who come from Gasco, explained that, "Gasco is divided into two companies: Gasco S.A., which corresponds to the administrative body, and Gasco GLP, which is the operational or production part. Chile lacks its own gas to supply the domestic market. The productive part is the workers who mix the raw materials coming from abroad via ships arriving at the Quintero plant, fill the cylinders with this mixture, and distribute the cylinders to customers in trucks and vehicles. The cost of the gas that arrives at the port in frozen form, Gasco S.A. buys at a price infinitely lower than the gas it then sells to other firms and to consumers in general".
The union representatives, given the situation of the collusion of gas prices, which operates as a true monopoly, indicated that they are preparing a proposal at the national level, "where they seriously study and according to the criteria of basic services as social rights, the establishment of a public company in the area that transfers specialised workers who today work for private companies in terrible conditions, to this eventual public industry; and that representatives of users' committees, who can be elected and revocable, supervise any possible irregularities that may arise, always under the principle of the common good".
Likewise, the leaders expressed that the Gasco company is a scandalous part of the gas collusion, as made visible by the investigation carried out by the FNE, exposing the illegal and fraudulent ways it uses to obtain its multi-million profits at the expense of the social majorities and consumers, in the midst of an unprecedented economic, social and health crisis. Likewise, the company headed by Pérez Cruz has made a large part of its profits by exploiting workers and systematically destroying trade union organisation, they said.
Tapia and Bustos said that after their historic strike, and as an exemplary punishment, the company took away the most important benefits they had won, such as "the Gas Workers' Welfare Corporation (Cobegas), which had two funds: a pension fund that granted former employees a pension complementary to the legal pension, and a Medical Service Fund that functioned as Medical Insurance, which was not conditioned by pre-existing conditions, was not deductible and to which retirees could belong until their death and their widows could continue with the insurance". They added that, "today, members who are Gasco workers are obliged to join the company's complementary insurance, which does have deductibles and age limits, and some of its coverage is lower, and retirees cannot belong to it. The president of Cobegas, Lorena Matamala, who is a leader of Gasco's Union 3, personally called on workers to switch to the company's health insurance in order to exterminate Cobegas' insurance. Both insurances were financed by a contribution from the company and a contribution from the worker-member. For example, the company contributed 1.4% of the taxable remuneration to the health insurance. All of this ended.
"Gasco's anti-union practices add up to a whole chapter of infamy against the interests of the workers", the leaders declared.
Greens leader slams Green infighting
By Joan Bryden,
Published September
The former leader of the Green party in British Columbia has endorsed the federal Liberals' plan for combatting climate change.
Andrew Weaver says the Liberal plan is "both bold and thoughtful" and is the only credible plan put forward by any federal party.
The endorsement is another blow for federal Green Leader Annamie Paul, who has struggled with internecine feuding and a lack of financial resources to run a national campaign.
By Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press, Published September
Paul admitted earlier this week that the party will not field a full slate of 338 candidates across the country.
She's not commenting directly on Weaver's endorsement but insists the Liberal climate plan is "smoke and mirrors."
Weaver posted his video endorsement of the Liberal climate plan on social media Thursday; it was eagerly circulated by Liberals, including Leader Justin Trudeau, who made much of the fact that Weaver is a climate scientist.
In the video, Weaver lauds the Liberal plan for including, among other measures, "a world-leading price on carbon pollution" and rapid zero-emissions vehicle deployment "which is even strong policy that one we developed here in B.C."
"This is a plan that reflects the urgency and scale of the crisis," he says.
"I'm extremely impressed at how ambitious the Liberal Party of Canada's plan is and I'm confident that this is the right path for Canada."
Trudeau retweeted Weaver's video, saying it "means a lot" given all he's accomplished as a climate scientist and former Green leader in B.C.
Before joining the B.C. legislature in 2013, Weaver was the Canada Research Chair in climate modelling and analysis at the University of Victoria and a lead author on several United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific assessments. He didn't run for re-election last year.
At a news conference Thursday in the Toronto Centre riding where she's trying for the third time to win a seat for herself in the House of Commons, Paul said she hadn't seen Weaver's video and couldn't comment on it.
But she argued that even if the Liberals were to implement every measure in their climate plan, Canada would not meet the Liberals' original target to reduce carbon emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, much less their new, more ambitious target of 40 to 45 per cent.
"The fact of the matter is that you cannot continue to build new pipelines like TMX, support other pipeline projects like Coastal GasLink, greenlight project after project for new oil and gas exploration, continue to support fracking of gas in this country and continue to support the fossil fuel industry to the tune of billions of dollars and hope to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," she said.
Paul muddled her message, however, misspeaking as she declared: "If you want a real plan the only option in this election for you is the Liberals."
Weaver stressed in an interview that he's not endorsing the Liberal party per se, he's endorsing the Liberal climate plan which he called "first rate" and "absolutely exceptional."
"I've always been focused on policy, not partisanship," he said.
Weaver said he hopes Paul wins a seat and believes she's "the best thing to happen" to the federal Green party. But he said he doesn't believe her party grasps the seriousness of the climate crisis.
"The federal Greens do not have a climate plan, to be perfectly blunt," Weaver said.
"If the federal Greens truly believe that climate change was the defining issue of our time then they wouldn't be imploding over infighting over views of a Mideast crisis for which nobody really cares what the views of one or two MPs in a Canadian Parliament are," he added.
In June, Fredericton Green MP Jenica Atwin crossed the floor to the Liberals after criticizing Paul's stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That triggered weeks of infighting and attempts by the party's executive to put Paul's leadership to a confidence vote by grassroots members.
Source: The Globe and Mail, Canada