EU sticks to its Green Deal guns

The bloc’s latest budget revision has linked a post-Covid recovery fund to its cleaner energy vision

The Covid-19 pandemic has hit energy consumption hard in most parts of the world. Europe is no exception—interruptions in industrial and commercial activity and in transportation led to a 5pc drop in the region’s energy demand in the first quarter of 2020, according to the IEA. Demand data for the second quarter is likely to be even worse. The IEA forecasts that annual global energy demand for the full year will fall by 6pc, “wiping out” the last five years of demand growth. As nations roll out their post-Covid recovery plans, one common theme has been their acknowledgement that the world cannot simply revert to ‘business as usual’, and that countries have an unparalleled opportunity to re-t