• Energy Research
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The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly affected the economic situation of many countries, which is worth considering not only globally but also in the context of specific industries. An asset that is particularly sensitive to negative economic changes is goodwill. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of the pandemic on the quality of financial disclosures concerning goodwill in consolidated financial statements of groups of chosen strategic sectors in Poland. We investigated the implications of the pandemic on the frequency and scale of goodwill impairment in relation to 23 companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange from the Energy, Mining, and Fuel Index. We identified the research gap in this area. For the purposes of this study, two research hypotheses were formulated: (H1) during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a slight improvement in the quality of goodwill disclosures in the consolidated financial statements of groups in the energy, fuel, and mining sectors; (H2) The COVID-19 pandemic caused a decrease in goodwill due to impairment losses in the consolidated financial statements of groups in the energy, fuel, and mining sectors. The hypotheses were verified on the basis of the above research sample. In order to verify the first hypothesis, we tested 81 consolidated financial statements for the years 2018–2021 based on a self-developed index of the quality of disclosed information. To verify the second hypothesis, we analyzed the frequency and scale of the estimated loss of goodwill during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the deterioration of the financial condition of the same research sample. The conducted research shows that the quality of disclosures regarding the goodwill in the examined sample has changed slightly. Contrary to our expectations, the pandemic did not materially reduce the value of goodwill. This means that the first hypothesis was verified positively, while the second hypothesis had to be rejected.

Many factors influence the prices of energy commodities and the value of energy and fuel companies. Among them there are the following factors: economic, social, environmental and political, and recently also the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the paper is to examine what the probability and intensity of a decrease in the prices of shares of energy and fuel companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (Poland) was during the first wave of the pandemic in the first quarter of 2020. The study used the survival analysis methods: the Kaplan-Meier estimator, the test of equality of duration curves and the Cox non-proportional hazards model. The analysis showed that the probability and intensity of price decline of energy and fuel companies in the initial period was the same as that of other companies. The differences become apparent only after 50 days from the established maximum of their value. The risk of price declines in energy and fuel companies increased significantly. This situation was related both to a temporary reduction in demand for energy and fuels, pandemic restrictions introduced in individual countries and the behaviour of stock market investors.

The main objective of the study is to assess the similarity between the time series of energy commodity prices and the time series of daily COVID-19 cases. The COVID-19 pandemic affects all aspects of the global economy. Although this impact is multifaceted, we assess the connections between the number of COVID-19 cases and the energy commodities sector. We analyse these connections by using the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) method. On this basis, we calculate the similarity measure—the DTW distance between the time series—and use it to group the energy commodities according to their price change. Our analysis also includes finding the time shifts between daily COVID-19 cases and commodity prices in subperiods according to the chronology of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings are that commodities such as ULSD, heating oil, crude oil, and gasoline are weakly associated with COVID-19. On the other hand, natural gas, palm oil, CO2 allowances, and ethanol are strongly associated with the development of the pandemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected all areas of socio-economic life around the world. Its impact concerns not only the health system and the health of the population, but also the economy. Tourism is one of the sectors hardest hit by the restrictions imposed by governments in the wake of the pandemic. The pandemic has resulted in restrictions and limitations on movement and travel, covering both domestic and international tourism, which raises the question of have these restrictions imposed on tourist activities also caused an environmental impact? The aim of this article is to examine what impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the environmental issues within the tourism sector in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. The research task is to investigate whether this impact has changed in the pandemic era compared to previous years, and whether it has been positive or negative. The research method is multiple regression analysis. The results of the study indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic caused a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from tourism in all CEE countries. Such decreases are both relative to 2019 and the estimated level of emissions that would be achieved if the countries surveyed achieved economic growth in 2020 consistent with the European Commission’s projections for that year. The scale of the impact varies from country to country, while the relationship between tourism development and pollution levels is positive.

The e-commerce industry has been developing extremely dynamically for many years. This development was intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the research conducted by the authors of this paper, in Poland, during the pandemic, the number of delivered parcels increased 20–100%, depending on the courier company. The research of the authors of this article focused on the energy efficiency of the last mile, which is very important for the efficiency of the entire delivery process to customers. As the authors calculated, the last mile can consume over 70% of energy of the whole distribution channel. The article presents the results of research concerning the energy efficiency of deliveries performed by couriers and express companies in Poland. Two models of distribution used Poland have been compared—direct deliveries to final customers, and deliveries to parcel lockers. The research methods are interviews with the managers and couriers, analysis of the literature, and the simulation method. According to the results of the simulations performed by the authors, distribution with the use of parcels lockers can help reduce the consumption of fuel even by 74–87% per parcel or 36% per m3. Apart from this, the authors calculated the impact of scale of operations on the energy efficiency of the transport processes on the last mile, which is an indirect effect of the growth of the e-commerce market, caused by the pandemic. Based on the results of the original research of the authors, it can be assessed that the growth of the number of the delivered parcels during the pandemic resulted in the consumption of fuel per one parcel being reduced in some cases by over 36%. The novelty of the authors’ research is that the conducted simulations regarded not only the efficiency of the processes, but also the energy consumption in delivering parcels at the last mile and during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly a destructive factor, strongly affecting the economic fields. From the perspective of the countries affected by the pandemic, almost all sectors of the economy saw declines in economic indicators. First, the lockdown and its social consequences contributed to this. The increasing time perspective since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic implies increasingly more studies analyzing its impact on various economic spheres. The aim of the research is to determine the difference in the level of fuel supplies between a pandemic situation and a situation where a pandemic would not occur. We assumed that the pandemic is a determinant of the decline in fuel supplies. The subjects of the analysis were the following fuels: kerosene-type jet fuel, gas oil and diesel oil, motor gasoline, and oil products. The countries of the European Union were analyzed. Monthly data from 2015–2021 provided by Eurostat were used for the analyses. The forecasts for 2020–2021 were determined using the exponential smoothing method. The assumption was shown to be accurate in the case of kerosene-type jet fuel, gas oil, and diesel oil. In this case, there was a clear drop in the level of supplies. The analysis of forecasts shows that if it were not for the COVID-19 pandemic, in the years 2020–2021, in accordance with the forecasts obtained, approximately 31,495 thousand tons of kerosene-type jet fuel and 11,396 thousand tons of gas oil and diesel oil would have been additionally supplied to the EU countries. For oil products, supply volumes also decreased, but unlike previously mentioned fuels, supply levels had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021. On the other hand, the forecast of deliveries indicates the volume of 95,683 thousand tons of oil products.

The aim of the present research is to assess the scale of the impact of air pollution on the level of burdening EU economies with the consequences of chronic diseases (non-communicable diseases—NCDs) in the context of limiting the potential productivity of human resources. This study attempts to identify inequalities in this area that occur in the territory of the European Union. The scale of the impact of environmental factors, and air pollution in particular, on the level of health limitations in the labor resources of EU countries was measured by the number of the years of healthy life lost (YLL and YLD) as a result of chronic diseases. The verification of the assumption of a persistently high level of dispersion was based on an analysis of the convergence process (β and σ) in the group of EU countries in 1990–2019. The results demonstrate that the level of health restrictions caused by air pollution is diverse in the group of EU-27 countries. The inequalities observed concern, in particular, the relationship between the old and the new EU, indicating a high burden of health consequences for the inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe (EU-CEE).

The energy sector is one of the most important sectors as it is the producer and supplier of fuel to run other industries and economies. This research aims to present an intertwined structure of risk exposure measuring the performance of the S&P Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Energy Index and selected companies from the constituents while taking into account two scenarios of risk, namely the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine conflict, in a manner appropriate for energy stock investors, energy companies, and the economy through hedging against investment risk, diversification in operations securing the continuation of energy production, and the risk of fluctuating prices in the energy market, respectively. The research problem is observed as the requirement to choose the representative stocks of the S&P (BSE) Energy Index to evaluate their situations during the period of the two crisis scenarios and to provide the current risk exposure to India’s energy sector. The methodological approach was through the process of selecting the stock market, the reason behind selecting the energy sector, analyzing the crisis situation, and finally providing the risk exposure matrix. The COVID-19 pandemic affected the index and stocks only in the beginning when the market was scared psychologically. The Russia–Ukraine conflict is considered to measure the stock status showing the effect on the index and the effect on selected stocks showing a deviated performance. All ten companies representative of the S&P BSE Energy Index ranked in the increasing order of risk exposure comparatively and concludes a high potential growth and return.