COVID-19 and Global Supply Chain Configuration: Economic and Emissions Impacts of Australia-China Trade Disruptions

Does COVID-19 pandemic event alter the dependence structure breaks between crude oil and stock markets in Europe and America

This article attempts to investigate the influence of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on the dependence structure break between crude oil and stock markets in Europe and America using ARMA-GARCH and R-vine copula methods. The empirical results demonstrate that international crude oil and European (American) stock markets have significant asymmetric and symmetric dependence structure, rapid outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic triggers their dependence structure break. The results of Kendall correlation confirms that COVID-19 pandemic amplifies the dependence risks between European Brent crude oil and France (German and Spain) stock markets and reduces the dependence risk between Brent crude oil and UK (Italy) stock markets after February 20, 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic may amplify the dependence risk between West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil and Canada stock markets after March 23, 2020, it first quickly reduces the dependence risks between WTI crude oil and US (Brazil and Mexico) stock markets after March 23, 2020 and then enlarges their dependence risks after June 30, 2020. European and American crude oil and stock markets have induced different ranges of their dependence risks in different time scales and their dependence structure breaks have good robustness.

The COVID-19 pandemic and energy transitions: Evidence from low-carbon power generation in China

The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has led to a decline in carbon emissions or an improvement in air quality. Yet little is known about how the pandemic has affected the "low-carbon" energy transition. Here, using difference-in-differences (DID) models with historical controls, this study analyzed the overall impact of COVID-19 on China's low-carbon power generation and examined the COVID-19 effect on the direction of the energy transition with a monthly province-specific, source-specific dataset. It was found that the COVID-19 pandemic increased the low-carbon power generation by 4.59% (0.0648 billion kWh), mainly driven by solar and wind power generation, especially solar power generation. Heterogeneous effects indicate that the pandemic has accelerated the transition of the power generation mix and the primary energy mix from carbon-intensive energy to modern renewables (such as solar and wind power). Finally, this study put forward several policy implications, including the need to promote the long-term development of renewables, green recovery, and so on.

COVID-19, recovery policies and the resilience of EU ETS

COVID-19 pandemic and its recovery bring opportunities and threats for global climate governance and further challenge climate related assets. In this study, we analyze the efficiency of government response policies and fiscal policies on green recovery by observing the variation characteristics of carbon allowance prices in the EU emission trading system (EU ETS). Using the OLS and threshold methods in the original time scales, we find that: (1) The EUA prices had an inverted U-shaped relationship with the number of new confirmed cases and deaths. (2) Government response policies had a better effect than fiscal policies when mitigating the negative impact of the pandemic. After decomposing and reconstructing the time series, the multiscale analysis indicates that: (3) The carbon price fluctuated in the short term with the increasing number of newly confirmed cases (or deaths) but gradually recovered due to the recovery policies. (4) Government response policies had a “stop-loss” effect in the short term, and then working alongside fiscal policies, sustained and promoted the development of the EU ETS and green recovery. In the post-COVID-19 era, we suggest the combination of various policies to convert the current health crisis into opportunities for climate change mitigation.