Sustainable energy development status (2020) with key lessons from the pandemic

15 October 2020 – This invited keynote paper is the most recent among energy reviews in the sustainability (economic, environmental and social impacts) framework published by the author, updated to year 2020 and is augmented by discussions on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on sustainable energy development, emphasizing reminder of the need for integrating and employing resilience planning and analysis with sustainable development, and by identifying some of the currently main game-changing developments, as well as introducing some of the planning status for countering the energy-related pandemic impacts in the extremely dynamic and transient energy field. This dynamic transience often results in significant consequences for humanity and can seldom be foreseen or recognized early enough to allow timely correctional reactions. A brief description of the recent estimates and forecasts of the energy resources, uses and the dizzy, and hence ruinous, volatility of their prices is presented.

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This paper was an invited Keynote of ECOS 2020, the 33rd International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization, Simulation, and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems, Osaka, Japan, June 29 – July 3, 2020. It is available in the conference proceedings.

 

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