The negative price for May WTI futures was probably an anomaly, but it also was a symptom of bigger underlying issues that the industry must address," said Arij van Berkel, who leads the energy research team at Lux Research in Amsterdam.

This year’s battery investments by auto makers have been “all about securing the supply chain” for electric vehicles, says Christopher Robinson, senior analyst at Lux Research.

The additional pressure of the pandemic “will likely shutter the US coal industry for good”, said Yuan-Sheng Yu, senior analyst at Lux Research. “It is becoming clear that Covid-19 will lead to a shake-up of the energy landscape and catalyze the energy transition, with investors eyeing new energy sector plays as we emerge from the pandemic.”

The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, Tesla and Volkswagen, which held about 70% of Europe’s battery electric vehicle sales last year, will remain Hyundai’s biggest competitors, says Chris Robinson, senior analyst at Lux Research.

The residential battery market is growing at a rate of 76% per year and is projected to break $50 billion in revenue by 2035, according to the research firm Lux Research.

"You have a degree of flexibility with pyrolysis that you don't have in any of the other recycling technologies," says Charles Willard, senior associate with Lux Research. 

The issue of high costs is the most likely reason Hyperloop will fail,” the Lux researchers wrote, adding that it’s unlikely to see any hyperloop routes in operation before 2040.

And that's thinking small, says Jon Melnick, who directs digital transformation research at consultancy Lux Research. "Amazon can not only add telehealth to health care, it can build a health care platform that includes food, consumer data, and all the products and services that can contribute to health," says Melnick.

As Arij van Berkel, director at Lux Research points out the traditional oil company approach to a price drop is to maintain investment in exploration and cut downstream investment in refineries and clean energy. With the oil price this low, and many expecting the price to remain low throughout the year, that’s not a strategy that makes much sense.

In September, Redefine Meat secured $6 million in funding from firms including big German chicken producer PHW Group and CPT Capital, a venture fund owned by private equity veteran and sustainability-minded investor Jeremy Coller. “The everlasting question is: Can you scale it up?” says Arnold Bos, a senior consultant at Lux Research Inc., a technology researcher. “If you need to print more, you need more printers.”