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| Fig. 1: Estimates of global daily CO2 emissions by sector reported by Liu et al.. [2] (Courtesy of Nat. Commun. under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.) |
This report aims to explore and analyze the quantitative impact of COVID-19 on global energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the year 2020.
The emergence of COVID-19 in early 2020 brought about a pandemic unprecedented in recent history. This pandemic forced governments around the world to enact isolation policies to contain the spread of the disease as much as possible. What correlates with these policies that closed international borders and quarantined populations to their homes are drastic changes in patterns of energy consumption and carbon emissions - both of which fell far below what was expected pre-pandemic. This report dives into how and why COVID-19 could have possibly impacted these consumption and emission patterns.
For the year 2020, The 2021 BP Statistical Review of World Energy reported a 4.5% decline in global primary energy consumption, the largest decline since 1945, as well as a 6.3% decline (-2.1 GT) in global carbon emissions to their lowest level since 2011. [1] This decline is strongly correlated with a decrease in surface transportation and aviation activity observed by a study conducted in 2020 during the pandemic that monitored daily emissions in different countries from a multitude of sectors. [2]
This study constructed estimates of daily sector-specific carbon emissions from near-real-time activity data from January 1st, 2019 to June 30th, 2020, as shown in Fig. 1. [2] They found that the sectors with the largest decreases in daily activity (and subsequent emissions) were ground transportation (-18.6%), domestic aviation (-35.8%) and international aviation (-52.4%).
An additional study independently conducted by different researchers came to similar conclusions. [3] This second study similarly generated estimates of the daily changes in emissions based on a multitude of different sources of available data and across several sectors in different countries. It found that the aviation sector experienced the largest changes in daily activity with a decrease of -75%, as well as the surface transport sector with a reduction of -50% in daily activity. [3] It is reasonable to infer that the lockdown policies that prevented people from leaving their homes and greatly reduced the need for travel had non-negligible effects on carbon emissions.
The inferred reduction transportation and aviation emissions coincided with the collapse in global fuel demand. [1] The use of jet fuel and kerosene decreased by 40% (3.2 Mb/d) and gasoline demand fell by 13% (3.1 Mb/d). [1] Oil demand, which accounted for roughly 75% of the total decline in global energy demand, decreased by a staggering 9.3% (9.1 Mb/d), one of the largest declines in history. [1]
The analysis of the data suggests that COVID-19 and its pandemic lockdown policies significantly reduced energy consumption and CO2 emissions across the globe in 2020.
© Jiwon Lee. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] "BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2021," British Petroleum, June 2021.
[2] Z. Liu et al., "Near-Real-Time Monitoring of Global CO2 Emissions Reveals the Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic," Nat. Commun. 11, 5172 (2020).
[3] C Le Quéré et al., "Temporary Reduction in Daily Global CO2 Emissions During the COVID-19 Forced Confinement," Nat. Clim. Change 10, 647 (2020).