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Coronavirus Crisis, Energy Markets and Policies and Their Macro-Financial Implications

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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "C: Energy Economics and Policy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2022) | Viewed by 18184

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Prof. Dr. Claudiu Albulescu

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Research Center in Engineering and Management, Management Department, Politehnica University of Timisoara, 300006 Timisoara, Romania
Interests: energy economics and finance; environmental and energy policies; financial macroeconomics; banking; finance; investment

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic broke out in Wuhan (Hubei region, China) on 31 December 2019. One month later, it had gradually grown to a global issue. After three months, the pandemic (called in medical terms SARS-CoV-2) had affected all countries, generating almost 1 million infections and thousands of deaths. Starting in February 2020, the financial markets reacted to the fear and panic triggered by the new coronavirus crisis. The real economy is severely shaken, and sectors like tourism and transport are nearly paralyzed. Food shortages appeared in developed countries, particularly in Europe. Although the virus looked to be almost defeated in China, a second phase of the COVID-19 spread hit Europe and the United States. The oil prices seemed to gradually accommodate the shocks until 9 March 2020, when Saudi Arabia flooded the market with oil. As a consequence, the crude oil price plunged by more than 20% in one day and the shock rapidly propagated to financial markets. The oil prices continued to fall in March 2020.

In this context, the present Special Issue entitled “Coronavirus Crisis, Energy Markets and Policies and Their Macro-Financial Implications” is designed to find answers to the following questions: How will the coronavirus crisis affect energy supply and consumption? How will energy policies change in the context of the new crisis? How does the coronavirus-induced uncertainty influence the energy prices? What will be the macro-financial impact of energy policies, and how will the coronavirus, and the energy consumption, affect the business cycle? What are the recommendations for portfolio analysts and risk managers dealing with energy price movements in extreme situations? Will energy markets behave differently after the coronavirus crisis?

Topics include, but are not limited to:

- The impact of the coronavirus crisis on energy supply and demand.

- The impact of the coronavirus crisis on the productivity of energy firms.

- The coronavirus oil collapse and OPEC supply policies.

- The dynamics of coronavirus numbers and the energy price volatility.

- The impact of the coronavirus crisis on the production of renewables.

- Event studies related to the impact of coronavirus on oil prices.

- Fuel prices co-movements in the context of the new coronavirus crisis.

- Extreme dependencies in energy prices and portfolio analyses.

- Energy policies in times of crisis.

- The interaction between coronavirus-induced uncertainty, economic policy and financial uncertainty, and their impact on energy prices.

- Energy prices and inflation in the context of the new coronavirus crisis.

- Energy prices and currency markets in the context of the new coronavirus crisis.

- Energy consumption fluctuations triggered by the coronavirus fear.

- Coronavirus, energy consumption, and global economic downturns.

- The non-linear interactions between energy prices and financial volatility.

- The identification of permanent and transitory shocks in energy prices.

Prof. Dr. Claudiu Albulescu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

coronavirus
COVID-19
energy markets
energy policies
energy prices
uncertainty
shocks
crisis
macro-financial implications

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 313 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Impact of COVID-19 on Energy Start-Up Companies: The Use of Global Financial Crisis (GFC) as a Lesson for Future Recovery

by Martina Pilloni, József Kádár and Tareq Abu Hamed

Energies 2022, 15(10), 3530; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15103530 - 11 May 2022

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2695

Abstract

Purpose: The study discusses COVID-19’s short-term impact on Israel’s renewable energy start-up sector from March to July 2020. Results and contributions: The interviewed companies were experiencing supply chain disruption, logistical issues, and restrictions in work access, all of which negatively impacted business operations. Moreover, companies reported revenue losses and difficulty in securing funding, interpreted here as financial distress. In some cases, companies cut back on staff. Insights from the literature on the global financial crisis (GFC) were used here to discuss patterns discerned from the interviews. Policy recommendations are presented at the end based on both the interpretation of data and a literature review. Methodology: This paper combined the qualitative research analysis of COVID-19’s impacts on energy start-up companies assessed by a questionnaire during interviews with a literature analysis on the previous GFC. Gap: This study aimed to clarify the issues experienced by the start-up companies in the renewable energy sector in Israel during the first months of the pandemic and contributes to the COVID-19 narrative in the energy sector, focusing on a topic that has not been thoroughly discussed at present. Relevance: The paper contains unique primary data on the short-term financial impact of COVID-19 on renewable energy start-up companies, and recommends policies to assist these companies and effectively respond to their financial needs in times of crisis. The paper points out that the absence of such a financial policy for start-up companies might pose risks to the companies’ growth and innovation, and have harmful consequences for the renewable energy sector, energy transition, and climate goals. The attention currently given to initial short-term measures should shift toward a more structural and long-term approach. Impact: The paper wants to capture the attention of policymakers and the research community in evaluating and adequately addressing the financial needs of the start-up sector, which is a crucial segment of the economy, and is indispensable for achieving long-term goals such as energy transition. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Coronavirus Crisis, Energy Markets and Policies and Their Macro-Financial Implications)

14 pages, 1919 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Spot Price of Colombian Electricity

by Andrés Oviedo-Gómez, Sandra Milena Londoño-Hernández and Diego Fernando Manotas-Duque

Energies 2021, 14(21), 6989; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14216989 - 25 Oct 2021

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1537

Abstract

COVID-19 disease shocked global economic activity and affected the electricity markets due to lockdown and work-from-home policies. Therefore, this study proposes an empirical analysis to identify the electricity spot price response during the preventive and mandatory insulation in Colombia, where the economic contraction caused the largest decrease in the electricity demand, especially in the industrial sector. The methodology applied was quantile regression to quantify the non-linear effect on the spot price returns, and two sample periods were selected to contrast the results: 2018 and 2019. The main findings showed that regulated demand variation caused the highest variability on the spot price dynamic during the strict quarantine. However, the price could not fully capture the effects of the demand change due to the short duration of the shock and, also, the price variability in 2019 was higher than 2020 by an El Niño shock. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Coronavirus Crisis, Energy Markets and Policies and Their Macro-Financial Implications)

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25 pages, 8972 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Electricity Consumption and Economic Growth in Romania

by Georgeta Soava, Anca Mehedintu, Mihaela Sterpu and Eugenia Grecu

Energies 2021, 14(9), 2394; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14092394 - 23 Apr 2021

Cited by 38 | Viewed by 4288

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic growth and electricity consumption and investigates the hypothesis of the influence of this consumption on the gross domestic product (GDP) for Romania. Using time series on monthly electricity consumption and quarterly GDP and a multi-linear regression model, we performed an analysis of the evolution of these indicators for 2007–2020, a comparison between their behavior during the financial crisis vs. COVID-19 crisis, and empirically explore the relationships between GDP and electricity consumption or some of its components. The results of the analysis confirm that the shock of declining activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic had a severe negative impact on electric energy consumption and GDP in the first half of 2020, followed by a slight recovery. By using a linear regression model, long-term relationships between GDP and domestic and non-household electricity consumptions were found. The empirically estimated elasticity coefficients confirm the more important impact of non-household electricity consumption on GDP compared to the one of domestic electricity consumption. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the results of the study could be useful for optimizing energy and economic growth policies at the national and European levels. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Coronavirus Crisis, Energy Markets and Policies and Their Macro-Financial Implications)

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25 pages, 3074 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Impact of the COVID-19 Lockdown on the Electricity System of Great Britain: A Study on Energy Demand, Generation, Pricing and Grid Stability

by Desen Kirli, Maximilian Parzen and Aristides Kiprakis

Energies 2021, 14(3), 635; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14030635 - 27 Jan 2021

Cited by 17 | Viewed by 3796

Abstract

The outbreak of SARS-COV-2 disease 2019 (COVID-19) abruptly changed the patterns in electricity consumption, challenging the system operations of forecasting and balancing supply and demand. This is mainly due to the mitigation measures that include lockdown and work from home (WFH), which decreased the aggregated demand and remarkably altered its profile. Here, we characterise these changes with various quantitative markers and compare it with pre-lockdown business-as-usual data using Great Britain (GB) as a case study. The ripple effects on the generation portfolio, system frequency, forecasting accuracy and imbalance pricing are also analysed. An energy data extraction and pre-processing pipeline that can be used in a variety of similar studies is also presented. Analysis of the GB demand data during the March 2020 lockdown indicates that a shift to WFH will result in a net benefit for flexible stakeholders, such as consumers on variable tariffs. Furthermore, the analysis illustrates a need for faster and more frequent balancing actions, as a result of the increased share of renewable energy in the generation mix. This new equilibrium of energy demand and supply will require a redesign of the existing balancing mechanisms as well as the longer-term power system planning strategies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Coronavirus Crisis, Energy Markets and Policies and Their Macro-Financial Implications)

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8 pages, 634 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Infectious Diseases, Market Uncertainty and Oil Market Volatility

by Elie Bouri, Riza Demirer, Rangan Gupta and Christian Pierdzioch

Energies 2020, 13(16), 4090; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13164090 - 7 Aug 2020

Cited by 90 | Viewed by 4567

Abstract

We examine the predictive power of a daily newspaper-based index of uncertainty associated with infectious diseases (EMVID) for oil-market volatility. Using the heterogeneous autoregressive realized volatility (HAR-RV) model, we document a positive effect of the EMVID index on the realized volatility of crude oil prices at the highest level of statistical significance, within-sample. Importantly, we show that incorporating EMVID into a forecasting setting significantly improves the forecast accuracy of oil realized volatility at short-, medium-, and long-run horizons. Our findings comprise important implications for investors and risk managers during the unprecedented episode of high uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Coronavirus Crisis, Energy Markets and Policies and Their Macro-Financial Implications)

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