Summary: While the ongoing
coronavirus pandemic continues to threaten millions of lives around the world,
the first half of 2020 saw an unprecedented decline in carbon dioxide emissions
-- larger than during the financial crisis of 2008, the oil crisis of the 1979,
or even World War II.
While the ongoing coronavirus
pandemic continues to threaten millions of lives around the world, the first
half of 2020 saw an unprecedented decline in CO2 emissions --
larger than during the financial crisis of 2008, the oil crisis of the 1979, or
even World War II. An international team of researchers has found that in the
first six months of this year, 8.8 percent less carbon dioxide was emitted than
in the same period in 2019 -- a total decrease of 1551 million tonnes. The
groundbreaking study not only offers a much more precise look at COVID-19's
impact on global energy consumption than previous analyses. It also suggests
what fundamental steps could be taken to stabilize the global climate in the
aftermath of the pandemic.
"What makes our study unique
is the analysis of meticulously collected near-real-time data," explains
lead author Zhu Liu from the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua
University in Beijing. "By looking at the daily figures compiled by the
Carbon Monitor research initiative we were able to get a much faster and more
accurate overview, including timelines that show how emissions decreases have
corresponded to lockdown measures in each country. In April, at the height of
the first wave of Corona infections, when most major countries shut down their
public life and parts of their economy, emissions even declined by 16.9 %.
Overall, the various outbreaks resulted in emission drops that we normally see
only on a short-term basis on holidays such as Christmas or the Chinese Spring
Festival."
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