HOUSTON, TX — Energy experts highlighted how the spread of the coronavirus exacerbated and magnified energy emergencies in the world during the 2nd Annual Global Energy Law and Policy Symposium discussing “The Energy Transition in COVID Altered World”.
The conference was part of the Energy Transition and Governance series, sponsored by the EU through its Mari Sklodowska-Curie grant and the efforts of the UH EENR Fellow and Universite de Lyon III professor Aubin Nzaou.
George Butler and research professor Gina Warren, co-director of the EENR Center, moderated the opening topic “Governing the Energy Transition: Between Momentum and Convergence of Crises.”
The first speaker was Tracy-Lynn Field of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, who discussed energy transitions in post-COVID Africa. The continent’s energy transition appears to be in limbo due to the pandemic, and African countries are currently focusing their attention on healthcare.
“There is consensus that the pandemic has increased Africa’s already debilitating debt burden,” Field said. “This increased debt burden has made the prospect of borrowing money for energy infrastructure development even more difficult.”
Louis De Fontenelle, an Associate Professor at the University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour, spoke during the third presentation, “The Problematic Recomposition of the Environment: The Case of Energy Transition in the Face of the Conjunction of Crises,” in which he emphasized the need for structural recomposition of the law to confront the structural scope of numerous crises.
“The notion of resilience is interesting in the context of energy transition,” De Fontenelle said. “In this framework the law can help a system to be resilient and withstand and overcome crises. The objective is to conduct this energy transition model, while designing it in such a way that is crisis-resistant.”
“The EU law is interested in the use of nuclear energy, so it’s not absent from discussions, including in the context of the energy transition,” said Associate Professor Bernadette Le Baut-Ferrarese, a professor at Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 in Lyon, France, as she concluded the first panel of her discussion titled, “The Place of Nuclear Power in the Energy Transition. EU Law between Ambivalence and Ambiguity.”
“On the other hand, the EU law is in retreat in regards to the interest of nuclear energy, and the EU has taken a back seat on the question of the value of nuclear energy for the energy transition,” she added.