19. Recent developments

Just when it looked as though the energy market might stabilize, with fossil fuel prices in line with producers' needs and consumers' capacities, while enabling the rapid development of renewable energies, the situation on the energy markets was altered by Covid-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In 2020, prices fell to very low levels as demand collapsed (for a brief moment on April 20, 2020, we even saw a negative price for US oil, as storage capacities were full and some players had to pay to find safe-haven capacity for their oil). With economic recovery in 2021, energy prices (electricity, oil, gas, coal) returned to pre-Covid levels. In 2022, the invasion of Ukraine caused gas prices to soar in Europe and Asia, while prices in the United States remained close to historical levels. As for electricity prices in Europe, they reached an unprecedented average...