Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Electricity Production Due to Lockdown

Abstract

We analyzed real-time measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), with total electricity production and nationwide restrictions phases in China, the United States of America, Europe, and India due to the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on atmospheric CO2. A decline of 3.7% in the global energy demand at about 150 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) in the first quarter (Q1) of 2020 was recorded compared to Q1 2019 due to the cutback on international economic activities. Our results showed that: (1) electricity production for the same period in 2018, 2019, and 2020 shrunk at an offset of 9.20%, which resulted in a modest reduction (−1.79%) of atmospheric CO2 to the 2017–2018 CO2 level; (2) a non-seasonal, abrupt, and brief atmospheric CO2 decrease by 0.85% in mid-February 2020 could be due to Phase 1 restrictions in China. The results indicate that electricity production reduction is significant to the short-term variability of atmospheric CO2. It also highlights China’s significant contribution to atmospheric CO2, which suggests that, without the national restriction of activities, CO2 concentration is set to exceed 2019 by 1.79%. Due to the lockdown, it quickly decreased and sustained for two months. The results underscore atmospheric CO2 reductions on the monthly time scale that can be achieved if electricity production from combustible sources was slashed. The result could be useful for cost-benefit analyses on the decrease in electricity production of combustible sources and the impact of this reduction on atmospheric CO2.

Impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown on land surface temperature, aerosol, and urban heat in Europe and North America

“…Moreover, CO 2 is the standard tracer of air pollution from complete combustion sources ( Hanaoka & Masui, 2020 ) and the global CO 2 emissions of the pandemic year have plunged to the 2006 levels due to lockdowns ( Le Quéré et al, 2020 ). Consequently, the atmospheric CO 2 concentrations fell by 18–39% in India ( Parida et al, 2020 ) and by 1.8% in Peninsular Malaysia during the lockdowns ( Yusup et al, 2020 ). Therefore, during nighttime more thermal radiation was able to escape to space due to reduced thermal absorption by CO 2 , leading to negative LST anomalies over major parts of Europe, while during daytime, the reduced aerosol and pollution levels, attenuated less solar irradiance ( Collaud Coen et al, 2020 ; Dumka et al, 2016 ; Qian et al, 2006 ), thus facilitating the increased LST over the major part of Europe and several parts in North America ( Fig.…”

Does Staying at Home during the COVID-19 Pandemic Help Reduce CO2 Emissions?

“…Investigating how daily changes in the number of hours spent at residential areas influence the daily CO2 emissions, a 1% increase in the time spent at home in the US, India, and France resulted in a 0.1 Mt, 0.25 Mt, and 0.006 Mt reduction in CO2 emissions, respectively (Figure 4a-c, Table 4). These results indicate that since more people were forced to stay at their homes during the quarantine, it is probable that the use of automobiles and aircraft in their daily lives declined, resulting in a reduction of carbon emissions [30,31]. These results indicate that constraining people at their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to reducing CO2 emissions.…”

Renewable Energy Deployment and COVID-19 Measures for Sustainable Development

“…The second LSTM model estimates new COVID-19 cases across countries. It involves 10 parameters, the data for which are publicly available [18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. In the process of model validation, the weight coefficients are evaluated, which do not depend on the absolute value of the variables.…”

“…A smaller number of adults were biased and felt they were in an unfavorable position, with a likely probability of making sustainable growth decisions [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29].…”