Does the Conflict-Related News from Donbass Affect the Volatility of the Renewable Energy Market?

Abstract

The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has deeply affected many countries, mainly EU member states, and has led to an energy crisis. However, this war is also an opportunity for the world to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy because the renewable energy transition has the potential to both reduce Russia’s energy revenues and ensure the EU’s energy security. For this reason, many countries are planning to invest in the renewable energy sector both to prevent Russia’s aggressive behaviour and to overcome the energy crisis. In this context, the study aims to investigate the existence of a dynamic relationship between the intensity of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the renewable energy stock market. For this purpose, we adopt a DC-MSV model with the number of conflict news in the Donbass region and ECO and ERIX return series data as proxies of the renewable energy market. As a result, we find that changes in the conflict intensity in the Donbass region do not affect the stock volatility of renewable energy companies, while there is a weak relationship between their returns.

Keywords

• renewable energy
• russia
• ukraine
• stock market
• war