on the eve of
COVID-19, whether it be the collapse of coal-fired power generation, the growing surplus of oil production, or the booming interest in renewables
The further 2020 goes into history, the clearer the extent of last year s collapse in fossil fuel demand becomes. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2020, global crude oil demand decreased by 9%, to 92.2 million barrels per day (bpd) – the level at which it was in 2013 (92.3 million bpd). In the second quarter, which was the most painful for the world economy, oil demand (85 million bpd) fell back to the 2006 values (85.3 million bpd).
The same goes for natural gas and coal, two other key resources in the global energy mix. The drop in global gas demand reached 3% (122 billion cubic meters (bcm) in absolute terms, which is comparable to the total pre-crisis consumption in France and Italy), and for coal, that figure is 5% (384 million tons), becoming the most serious since the Second World War,