Bloomberg The global plunge in electricity demand will drag on long after nations lift stay-at-home orders, leading to the biggest annual drop since the Great Depression and fundamentally reshaping power markets. As economies struggle to recover, worldwide electricity consumption will decline 5% in 2020, the most in more than eight decades, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In the ...

Bloomberg New power from wind and solar is set to fall this year for the first time in two decades. Construction of new wind and solar farms is being delayed by factory closures, workers’ needs for social distancing and developers’ financial concerns as they emerge from the coronavirus crisis, according to research from the International Energy Agency. The world is ...

Bloomberg Canadian and Alaskan crude that normally travels to the US West Coast is finding a market in China, where demand is almost back to pre-pandemic levels. The Sofia became the second oil tanker in less than a month to ship Alaskan oil to Qingdao, China, when it left Valdez over the weekend, data compiled by Bloomberg show. At about ...

The economy isn’t going to bounce back quickly on its own from the coronavirus pandemic. State reopenings, premature or not, will restore a modicum of economic activity, but it won’t be enough to put many local businesses in the black. If the virus comes roaring back in states that reopen, it will cause a wave of fear that will depress ...

Walmart Inc, one of the few big winners during the coronavirus crisis, just had a blowout quarter. The knock-on positive effects may last beyond the pandemic. Bulk buying of toilet paper, bleach and hand sanitiser helped the world’s biggest retailer increase US same-store sales (excluding fuel) by a better-than-expected 10% in the three months ended on May 1. That marked ...

After the world has finally worked its way beyond the Covid-19 crisis, it may have to confront a danger that almost everybody has forgotten: higher inflation. At the moment, it’s the last thing investors and governments are worried about, which is exactly what makes the threat so plausible. It has been decades since governments have lost sleep over high inflation. ...

At one level, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s decision to fire the department’s inspector general tells us nothing we didn’t already know. Even before Pompeo enabled the smearing and sidelining of US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch last year, he had made it clear that he would tolerate political attacks and even retaliation against members of the US foreign service. ...

Bloomberg Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer Warren East’s five-year bid to revive earnings has been shattered by the coronavirus as the UK engineering giant moves to scrap 9,000 jobs and considers closing sites. The jet-engine maker will cut 17% of its workforce and boost savings goals to contend with a travel slump that’s drastically shrunk the aviation market, according ...

Bloomberg Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA dropped as much as 60% after completing a recapitalisation that hands control of the company to aircraft lessors and bondholders. Investors had in recent days stubbornly traded Norwegian’s shares far above the price of a discounted equity issue that came on top of a $830 million debt conversion. On Wednesday, the stock collapsed after the ...

Bloomberg Marks & Spencer Group Plc said it’s outperforming its worst-case coronavirus scenario in a positive sign for a UK retailer that’s going through the latest of a series of turnaround programmes. When the outbreak spread to the UK, M&S said it anticipated that clothing and home sales would fall by 70% in the four months through July, with its ...