How Did Covid Change Long-Term Energy Demand and Supply?
As governments roll out vaccination programs and lift coronavirus-induced restrictions on travel and leisure, the world's demand for oil is slowly returning to normal.
The International Energy Agency in June forecast that global crude demand will return to its pre-pandemic high during 2022's final quarter.
At the same time, resurgent consumption has driven a rebound in carbon emissions—even as some wealthy countries are accelerating their push toward low-carbon energy such as wind and solar power.
This leads to two crucial questions: Will the energy industry look back at the pandemic and say it was a temporary blip? Or will it see the past year as a time that fundamentally altered global energy demand and supply moving forward?
Wall Street Journal reporter David Hodari spoke with three energy experts about those questions. Tim Gould is head of energy-supply outlooks and investment at the International Energy Agency in Paris. Amy Myers Jaffe is managing director of the climate-policy lab at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Marianne Kah is a senior research scholar and advisory-board member at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation.