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AfrElec COMMENTARY AfrElec
17% daily emissions drop cannot hold back climate change
The 17% emissions drop is unlikely to have a fundamental effect on future emissions levels, but new research could give governments more insight into how to fight climate change, writes Richard Lockhart
GLOBAL
WHAT:
Peer-reviewed study puts global emission drop at 17%
WHY:
Transport accounted
for half of the fall, while aviation was the sector posing the steepest drop
WHAT NEXT:
The reduction is not enough to meet IPCC climate change goals, and emission will bounce back as the lockdown is eased
DAILY CO2 emissions fell by a maximum of 17% on a global basis in early April, the world’s first peer-reviewed study into the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdowns has found.
For 2020 as a whole, emissions are forecast to be up to 7% lower across the world, or 2.729bn tonnes less, depending on how the quickly the lockdown is eased and how future social distanc- ing measures are kept in place.
Surface transport accounted for half of the 17% fall, which was posted on April 7 and rep- resented a 17% decrease compared to the mean emissions figure for the same time in 2019. This fall reduced emissions to the level last seen in 2006. On that day, aviation showed the steepest drop in sectoral emissions at 60%, followed by surface transport at 36%.
From January to April, global emissions declined by a total of 1.048bn tonnes, with China experiencing the highest reduction at 242mn tonnes, followed by the US with 207mn tonnes, Europe with 123mn tonnes and India with 98mn tonnes.
The study, led by Professor Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia in the UK and released on May 19 in the journal Nature Cli- mate Change, is the most detailed attempt yet
to calculate the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on global emissions.
The study’s authors said that the crisis enabled researchers to carry out far more accurate esti- mates of emissions levels across the world and in different energy sectors.
Research
The study analysed daily CO2 emissions across 69 countries, 50 US states, 30 Chinese prov- inces, six economic sectors and three levels of confinement.
“We are only one-third of the way through the year, with a lot of uncertainty ahead, so instead of only making an estimate for emissions reductions for 2020 as a whole, we have now also made the first dataset of daily CO2 emissions,” said Glen Peters, a research director at the Cicero Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway.
“By mapping daily emissions with scenarios for future confinement policies, we made various estimates for 2020 emissions,” Peters said.
The study was not able to use official emis- sions data published by governments, which are typically released a year or two behind. It was also the first to try to calculate global emissions
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