Covid 19 coronavirus: World carbon dioxide emissions drop 7 per cent in pandemic-hit 2020

Scientists say the drop in carbon emissions is attributable to Covid-related restrictions. Photo / AP

A locked-down, pandemic-struck world cut its carbon dioxide emissions this year by 7 per cent, the biggest drop ever, new preliminary figures show.

The Global Carbon Project, an authoritative group of dozens of international scientists who track emissions, calculated that the world will have put 37 billion US tonnes (34 billion metric tonnes) of carbon dioxide in the air in 2020. That's down from 40.1 billion US tonnes (36.4 billion metric tonnes) in 2019, according a study published Thursday (US time) in the journal Earth System Science Data.

Breaking: Global carbon emissions fell by 6.7% in 2020, erasing nearly a decade of rising emissions amid pandemic lockdowns.

This means that if the world's Covid recovery prioritizes climate policies, global emissions will have permanently peaked in 2019.https://t.co/OYs5NbiiGD pic.twitter.com/MbGmf9jUoA

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) December 11, 2020

Scientists say this drop is chiefly because people are staying home, travelling less by car and plane, and that emissions are expected to jump back up after the pandemic ends. Ground transportation makes up about one-fifth of emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief man-made heat-trapping gas.

"Of course, lockdown is absolutely not the way to tackle climate change," said study co-author Corinne LeQuere, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia.

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The same group of scientists months ago predicted emission drops of 4 per cent to 7 per cent, depending on the progression of Covid-19. A second coronavirus wave and continued travel reductions pushed the decrease to 7 per cent, LeQuere said.

Emissions dropped 12 per cent in the United States and 11 per cent in Europe, but only 1.7 per cent in China. That's because China had an earlier lockdown with less of a second wave. Also, China's emissions are more industrial based than other countries and its industry was less affected than transportation, LeQuere said.

The calculations — based on reports detailing energy use, industrial production and daily mobility counts — were praised as accurate by outside scientists.

Even with the drop in 2020, the world on average put 1185 tonnes (1075 metric tonnes) of carbon dioxide into the air every second.

Traffic Los Angeles would normally be bumper to bumper. Photo / AP

Final figures for 2019 published in the same study show that from 2018 to 2019 emissions of the main man-made heat-trapping gas increased only 0.1 per cent, much smaller than annual jumps of around 3 per cent a decade or two ago. Even with emissions expected to rise after the pandemic, scientists are wondering if 2019 be the peak of carbon pollution, LeQuere said.

"We are certainly very close to an emissions peak, if we can keep the global community together," said United Nations development director Achim Steiner.

Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, thinks emissions will increase after the pandemic, but said "I am optimistic that we have, as a society learned some lessons that may help decrease emissions in the future".