Impact analysis of COVID-19 responses on energy grid dynamics in Europe

Abstract

When COVID-19 pandemic spread in Europe, governments imposed unprecedented confinement measures with mostly unknown repercussions on contemporary societies. In some cases, a considerable drop in energy consumption was observed, anticipating a scenario of sizable low-cost energy generation, from renewable sources, expected only for years later. In this paper, the impact of governmental restrictions on electrical load, generation and transmission was investigated in 16 European countries. Using the indices provided by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, precise restriction types were found to correlate with the load drop. Then the European grid was analysed to assess how the load drop was balanced by the change in generation and transmission patterns. The same restriction period from 2020 was compared to previous years, accounting for yearly variability with ad hoc statistical technique. As a result, generation was found to be heavily impacted in most countries with significant load drop. Overall, generation from nuclear, and fossil coal and gas sources was reduced, in favour of renewables and, in some countries, fossil gas. Moreover, intermittent renewables generation increased in most countries without indicating an exceptional amount of curtailments. Finally, the European grid helped balance those changes with an increase in both energy exports and imports, with some net exporting countries becoming net importers, notably Germany, and vice versa. Together, these findings show the far reaching implications of the COVID-19 crisis, and contribute to the understanding and planning of higher renewables share scenarios, which will become more prevalent in the battle against climate change.

Impacts of COVID-19 on energy demand and consumption: Challenges, lessons and emerging opportunities

“…Global energy demand in 2020 is estimated to decline by 6% compared to 2019, a fall seven times greater than the 2009 financial crisis. Compared to the mean value from 2015 to 2019, the total mean electricity generation from 16 European countries in April 2020 dropped by 9% (25 GW), where fossil energy generation decreased by 28% (24 GW), nuclear energy decreased by 14% (11 GW), whilst renewables increased by 15% (15 GW) [7] . Although the fact that overall energy demand declines, is simple and clear, the repercussions are very complicated in different energy types and consumption patterns of different regions.…”

“…Mastropietro et al [5] overviewed urgent global measures on energy consumer protection during the pandemic. There are more studies focusing on problems in specific countries or regions, such as the analysis of the short-term impacts on the United States electricity sector [11] , the review of government innervations in Africa [12] , the review of solar energy pathway in Malaysia [13] , the impact analysis for power sector operation in Indian [14] , the impact overview analysis of impacts on energy grid dynamics in Europe [7] , the overview of impacts on electricity and oil demand in China [15] , and the impacts of containment measures on European electricity consumption [16] . The aforementioned studies contributed to the understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic from different views.…”

A retrospective analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions on energy consumption at a disaggregated level

“…Therefore, the methodology for this mid-term impact study is the direct comparison of historical data of the year 2020 with the average consumption of the two previous years. This is the most common way to evaluate the impact, many authors who have studied the variation of energy consumption due to the COVID have assessed the impact evaluation using the energy consumption in previous years [7] , [8] , [9] , [10] , [14] , [15] , [16] , [17] , [19] , [20] , [23] .…”

“…How the energy consumption profiles changed in European countries during lockdowns are studied in [7] , [8] . In [9] , an open-access data hub to track the impact of the COVID-19 on the energy consumption on some states of the US is proposed.…”

More Is Not Enough: A Deeper Understanding of the COVID-19 Impacts on Healthcare, Energy and Environment Is Crucial

“…COVID-19 challenged healthcare systems, changed population lifestyles, reshaped energy consumption and living environment in society, and further triggered a series of chain reactions in the healthcare–energy–environment system. Various observations and quick lessons were published, via the fast track, to highlight the local impact on a single region or single sector, e.g., the healthcare impact in Latin America [ 16 ] and India [ 17 ], the short-run impact on the electricity sector in the United States (US) [ 18 ], the energy grid dynamics in Europe [ 19 ], the impact on air quality in Brazil [ 20 ], and the assessment of the impact on the environment in China [ 21 ]. Although the aforementioned studies did not pay attention to broader situations, they did contribute to understanding the specific impacts of COVID-19, which lay the foundation for further systematic integration.…”