From a sustainable development perspective, the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the Global Electricity Generation Structure.

The research by Peng, Yang, Lu and Guo structured how energy consumption has been impacted by COVID-19. During the pandemic the governments had to enforce lockdown measures, which were the short-term effects. Further, the outcome of the lockdown measures resulted in an increase in the share of renewable energy and a decrease in the total electricity consumption. The research uses the data from International Energy Agency (IEA) to analyse electricity consumption and production. This paper specifically analyses the long-term effects of the pandemic. In short- term, the pandemic did not affect market structure and overall electricity demand, however, it impacted the generation of electricity via renewable resources in the long-run. The after effects of the pandemic are still ongoing and to be aligned with sustainable development is challenging.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shocked the world with quarantine in place, different lockdown measures in different countries and a fall in economic development. A source for long term development is energy for basic life and production and ensures the stability of a global economy. Hence, the research studied the correlation between economy and energy which is vital in understanding sustainable social and economic development as well as energy transformation. The research article mentions, “based on the accessibility of electricity consumption data, it is more seasonable and objective in reflecting economic development and residents income level”. Generally, scholars mostly analyse consumption data or power production to study the relationship between economic growth and energy consumption. Additionally, the article states that, “research shows that there is a one-way Granger causality between economic growth and power consumption, that is, income growth leads to an increase in power consumption. There is also evidence that the increase in electricity consumption will improve the level of economic growth, otherwise it will not. The different conclusions of existing researches show that electricity consumption is not strictly correlated with economic growth”

International communities are also concerned about climate change that it has become a consensus topic. The article also mentions that 193 countries by the end of 2021 had signed the Paris Agreement and “carbon neutrality” commitments had been proposed. Moreover, “after the outbreak of the epidemic, many articles used error correction models (ECM), autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) or neural network models to study the impact of the epidemic on power consumption and supply. According to the statistics of the International Energy Agency (IEA), after the outbreak of the epidemic, the total demand and structure of the power market have changed”. Additionally after the outbreak the residential electricity consumption has increased significantly, but the power consumption of the commercial and the industrial sectors has decreased. There is also going to be a decrease of global carbon emissions by 8%. The consequences of the pandemic are due to the lockdown measures that have restricted production, reduced the electricity consumption of natural gas, coal and so forth, daily activities and the electricity demand was also reduced. Uncontrollable resources such as solar and wind energy were not affected during the pandemic. Therefore, there was an increase in the renewable energy production during the lockdown period. In addition “the carbon dioxide emissions decreased sharply, and the change of the power market structure challenged how to ensure that the higher proportion of renewable energy expected by policy makers could be achieved while maintaining economic benefit” In transitioning to renewable energy enhances the process of the energy structure.

There were some challenges in the smooth process of low carbon transformation. During the pandemic the environmental policies were not prioritized or considered amongst the authorities. The other challenges that affected the energy transformation are the net capital outflow, and the global supply chain crisis. The normal activities were curbed such as the normal production of the electricity sector and the demand for electricity. Our daily routine can not function without human activity in order to achieve climate change mitigation targets, as many people need work and an income. According to the article, the best way to move forward is by transitioning to renewable energy. There are challenges, however, in transitioning to clean energy as the obstacles are: power storage, policy formation and supply chain stability. 

The research by Peng, Yang, Lu and Guo focused on energy structure improvement and power consumption during the epidemic. The current articles mostly mention qualitative analysis of a religion, country, and is limited in research is the severity of the pandemic and intuitive data description as well as horizontal comparisons between different regions and countries. The paper was structured as follows:

The first section

a) “establishing a panel data model to quantify the impact of the epidemic on the energy production”

 b) “Combined with the availability of data, the research object was expanded to more than 40 countries or regions in the world, and the impact of the epidemic on power production and consumption in countries with different epidemic severity and economic development was discussed.”

 c) “Data is updated to the end of 2021, when most countries have entered the phase of regular epidemic prevention and control. Based on this, the description and discussion on the long-term effect of the outbreak on the electricity generation structure are more appropriate and objective.”

The second section - theoretical analysis and assumptions

Third section - part is empirical results analysis.

 Fourth part - conclusions and prospects.

In summary the paper analysed the impact COVID-19 had on global electricity generation structure. The short term effects increased the share of renewable energy but impacted on the power demand. The long-term effects showed that the lockdown measures were unsustainable and when the economy reopens again there will be a challenge in gaining the normative ways of productivity. Further, the article concluded, “. On the other hand, the impact on the influence of different developed countries is also different, in countries with high level of economic development to have a better ability to resist the exogenous shock, compared to before the outbreak, even faster development of renewable energy power generation market, a lot of money to the sustainable development of the market, fully support the renewable energy power generation industry)”. The suggestion from the article in transitioning to sustainable development is as follows:  Governments should support countries who want to transition to renewable energy. There must be a focus on renewable energy technologies to achieve net zero carbon emissions. More importantly, most countries need to meet their “United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement specific implementation details”.

Renewable energy is supported by many non-governmental organisations such as Greenpeace, WWF, 350.org and many more. The research showed that during the lockdown period that renewable energy was much more reliable and an everlasting resource. As the world is transitioning to a digital sector, we will not see waiters in restaurants but robots, hence, we need to transition to renewable energy technology, which is a renewable energy resource, which will never get depleted. We can not rely on coal and natural gas as non-renewable resources. Renewable energy is the future to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.