PANDEMIC restrictions saw an unprecedented fall in greenhouse gas emissions in the first half of this year – larger than during the 2008 financial crisis and even World War II – experts said today.

As governments ordered lockdowns to try to crush the first wave of Covid-19, CO2 emissions from transport, power and aviation plummeted, the international team of researchers said. 

Using data including hourly electricity production, vehicle traffic from more than 400 cities worldwide, daily passenger flights and monthly production and consumption figures, they determined that the emissions drop was the largest in modern history. 

They suggested some fundamental steps that could be taken to “stabilise the global climate” as countries look to recover from the economic shock of the pandemic.

They noted, however, that emissions had rebounded to their usual levels by July, when most nations had eased lockdown measures.

Zhu Liu from the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing said the study was the most accurate yet undertaken on the pandemic’s effect on emissions. 

“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,” said Zhu, lead author of the study published in Nature Communications. 

The team found that CO2 emissions from transport decreased by 40% in the first half of 2020, and power production and industry emissions fell 22% and 17%, respectively. 

With more people working from home, the study showed a perhaps surprising 3% fall in residential emissions – something researchers attributed to an abnormally warm winter leading to lower heating consumption. 

‘Complete overhaul’ needed 

An international plan to limit global warming outlined in the 2015 Paris climate deal aims to cap temperature rises well below 2°C compared with pre-industrial levels. 

The accord envisages a safer limit of 1.5°C of warming, something the United Nations said would take an annual 7.7% reduction in emissions this decade to achieve. 

The authors of today’s study agreed with the writers of similar research released in August claiming that the 2020 emissions dip was unlikely to ease the climate emergency in the long term.

They said nothing less than a “complete overhaul” of the industry and commerce would keep a handle on global warming. 

“While the CO2 drop is unprecedented, decreases of human activities cannot be the answer,” said co-author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. 

“We need structural and transformational changes in our energy production and consumption systems.” – AFP, October 14, 2020.