Before the coronavirus pandemic, climate experts had expected global carbon emissions from cement production and fossil fuels to rise this year. It had been forecast that carbon dioxide emissions would surpass the estimated 36.8bn tons produced last year. However, COVID-19 lockdowns worldwide have triggered the most significant drop in demand for fossil fuels ever recorded – thus rendering those projections made in the previous year null and void. The new expectations are that emissions will fall by about 5% (2.5 billion tons of CO2).
Don’t be fooled. This steep decline in emissions is not a climate triumph. As the head of the International Energy Agency, Dr. Fatih Birol, the, warned:
This decline is happening because of the economic meltdown in which thousands of people are losing their livelihoods, not as a result of the right government decisions in terms of climate policies. The reason we want to see emissions decline is because we want a more livable planet and happier, healthier people.
All the recessions of the last 50 years combined didn’t even cause emissions to slump so low as this single year will. The strict restrictions on work, travel, and industry, imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus, are expected to cut trillions of cubic meters of gas from people not driving to work, billions of barrels of oil from millions of flights being canceled, and tons of coal from being used in factories and power plants for energy. The global energy system in 2020 has lost unprecedented demand. This data is coming from a fossil fuel analysis undertaken by a Norwegian energy consultancy called Rystad Energy, commissioned by the Guardian.
Erik Holm Reiso, a senior partner at Rystad, said:
The coronavirus pandemic is an unprecedented event for energy markets, which will have a substantial impact on the world’s total carbon emissions. The last time demand for oil contracted, during the financial crisis in 2008 to 2009, demand fell by 1.3m barrels of oil a day. But COVID-19 could cause oil demand to fall by more than five times as much.
The analysts point out that although the use of transport fuels may start to recover in the second half of the year, demand would still lag behind the figures recorded in 2019. Of course, eventually, when the economy improves, the emissions will rise again, and the climate will suffer much. So, how can we learn from the good of what’s going on here and carry it into the future? How can we make changes to keep emissions low and stop them from soaring back to dangerously high levels for our planet?
Resio said:
The real question is over the long-term impact of the virus. If we learn that remote working can work people may begin to question whether we need to take long haul flights to meet people in person. This could alter whether demand for oil ever recovers to the levels we have seen in previous years.
However, Birol said:
If governments don’t take the right measures to include support for clean energy in new economic stimulus packages then this decline could be easily wiped out in the rebound of the economy, once COVID-19 is brought under control. These figures are important and impressive. But they don’t make me happy. For me, it’s more important about what happens next year, and the year after that.
The climate crisis is still as real as ever.
