Coronavirus slashes carbon emissions
Credit to Author: Agence France-Presse| Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2020 16:12:33 +0000
BEIJING: The coronavirus epidemic that has paralyzed the Chinese economy may have a silver lining for the environment.
China’s carbon emissions have dropped by least 100 million metric tonnes over the past two weeks, according to a study published on Wednesday by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) in Finland.
That is nearly 6 percent of global emissions during the same period last year.
The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus — which killed over 2,000 and infected more than 74,000 people across China — had led to a drop in demand for coal and oil, resulting in the emissions slump, the study published on the British-based Carbon Brief website said.
Over the past two weeks, daily power generation at coal power plants was at a four-year low compared with the same period last year while steel production had sunk to a five-year low, researchers found.
China is the world’s biggest importer and consumer of oil, but production at refineries in Shandong province — the country’s petroleum hub — fell to the lowest level since autumn 2015, the report said.
Economic activity in China usually picks up after the Lunar New Year holiday, which began on January 25.
But authorities extended the holidays this year — by a week in many parts of the country, including Shanghai — in an effort to contain the epidemic by keeping people at home.
“Measures to contain [the] coronavirus have resulted in reductions of 15 percent to 40 percent in output across key industrial sectors,” the report said.
“This is likely to have wiped out a quarter or more of the country’s CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions over the past two weeks, the period when activity would normally have resumed after the Chinese New Year holiday,” it continued.