The COVID-19 pandemic is foremost a humanitarian crisis. The scale of the economic cost and disruption means it is also likely to have a significant and persistent impact on the global economy and energy system. Although considerable uncertainty remains, the near-term economic impact of COVID-19 on global GDP looks set to be less severe than previously anticipated, pointing to a stronger-than-expected outlook for energy demand and carbon emissions in the near term. The Outlook was largely prepared before the military action by Russia in Ukraine and does not include any analysis of the possible implications of those developments on economic growth or global energy markets.
There has been a marked strengthening in the past two years in the ambitions of governments around the world to increase the pace and extent to which they reduce carbon emissions. Although the extent to which these greater ambitions will be met is uncertain, they do suggest that there might be stronger momentum towards the world reducing carbon emissions than implied by many ‘business-as-usual’ type scenarios.
There has been increasing attention over the past few years on achieving a significant fall in global emissions by 2030 to conserve the world’s remaining carbon budget.