(Press-News.org) COVID-19 has not only caused a temporary drop in global CO2 emissions, it has also reduced the share of power generated by burning coal - a trend that could in fact outlast the pandemic. This is the key result of a new study by a team of economists based in Potsdam and Berlin that looked at COVID-19's impact on the energy system and demand for electricity. Their findings show that the pandemic, while putting a terrible toll on people's lives and the economy, has also opened a window of opportunity to make this current trend of decreasing coal use irreversible: Supported by the right climate policy measures, power sector emissions could decline more rapidly than previously thought.
"Coal has been hit harder by the Corona crisis than other power sources - and the reason is simple," explains lead author Christoph Bertram from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "If demand for electricity drops, coal plants are usually switched off first. This is because the process of burning fuels constantly runs up costs. The plant operators have to pay for each single ton of coal. In contrast, renewable power sources such as wind and solar plants, once built, have significantly lower running costs - and keep on operating even if the demand is reduced."
This way, fossil fuels were partly squeezed out of the electricity generation mix in 2020 and global CO2 emissions from the power sector decreased around 7%. By looking at India, the USA, and European countries alone a more dramatic picture emerges: In these key markets, where monthly electricity demand declined by up to 20% compared to 2019, the monthly CO2 emissions decreased by up to 50%.
The researchers estimate that it's likely that emissions will not reach the all-time high of 2018 anymore. "Due to the ongoing crisis, we expect that 2021 electricity demand will be at about 2019's levels, which, given ongoing investments into low-carbon generation means lower fossil generation than in that year," says co-author Gunnar Luderer from PIK. "As long as this clean electricity generation growth exceeds increases in electricity demand, CO2 emissions from the power sector will decline. Only if we saw unusually high demand for electricity along with surprisingly few additions of renewable power plants from 2022-2024 and beyond, fossil fuel generation would rebound to pre-pandemic levels."
While the power sector has seen a dynamic transformation process even before the advent of COVID-19, the pandemic has weakened the market position of coal-fired power generation and illustrated its vulnerability.
"Our research shows that investing in fossil-fueled power is not only environmentally irresponsible - it is economically very risky," says co-author Ottmar Edenhofer, Director of both PIK and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change. "In the end, it will certainly take carbon pricing to cut emissions at the required pace and stabilize our Climate. Yet the impacts of the Corona crisis on the power generation sector have put political leaders in a unique position: Along with additional policies such as eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels and increasing investments in wind and solar power, it is now easier than ever before to put an end to high-carbon electricity."
INFORMATION:
Article: Christoph Bertram, Gunnar Luderer, Felix Creutzig, Nico Bauer, Falko Ueckerdt, Aman Malik, Ottmar Edenhofer (2021): COVID-induced low power demand and market forces starkly reduce CO2 emissions. Nature Climate Change [DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-00987-x]
Higher blood pressure at night than in daytime may be a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease in older men. This is suggested by a new study from researchers at Uppsala University, now published in the journal Hypertension.
'Dementia' is an umbrella term used to describe a category of symptoms marked by behavioural changes and gradually declining cognitive and social abilities. Numerous factors, including hypertension (high blood pressure), affect the risk of developing these symptoms.
Under healthy conditions, blood pressure (BP) varies over 24 hours, with lowest values reached at night. Doctors call this nocturnal blood pressure fall 'dipping'. However, in some people, ...
A new process for inserting synthetic gene circuits into host cells, developed by a team of bioengineers at Arizona State University, has broad implications for improving the effectiveness of a range of disease therapies.
Synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary research field that uses engineering principles to create biological components that don't exist in the natural world. These synthetic components mimic naturally evolved organisms, but are customized to fight disease, including cancer.
A paper recently published in Nature Communications, "Winner-Takes-All Resource Competition Redirects Cascading Cell Fate Transitions," outlines how gene circuits can be reconfigured so that they do not overwhelm the host cells.
"We ...
In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an almost 80% decrease in primary care office visits in Ontario and a 56-fold increase in virtual visits, found new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
"Initial reports from primary care providers during the pandemic in both Canada and the United States showed major disruptions to care, decreased payments, challenges keeping offices functioning, lack of personal protective equipment and widespread uptake of virtual care, but we didn't know how COVID-19 had affected in-person office visits," says ...
People living in regions with high levels of outdoor artificial light at night may face a higher risk of developing thyroid cancer. The finding comes from a study published early online in END ...
A new national survey of more than 2,000 Americans by END ...
A method that instructs immune system cells to help repair damaged tissues in the intestine has been developed by researchers at KU Leuven and Seoul National University. This opens the way for more effective treatment of inflammatory bowel disease, including ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. The study was carried out on humans and mice.
When functioning correctly, the immune system protects against harmful agents such as bacteria that get into the body. But in conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the immune system attacks the tissues that line the gut, forming ulcers and causing pain and discomfort. Nearly 3.9 million women and 3.0 ...
Philadelphia, February 8, 2021 - Early exposure to nutritious foods may help children develop more healthful eating habits, but package labels can make it difficult for parents to understand what they are feeding their young children, according to a END ...
Researchers in South Korea have successfully developed a wearable sensor that can detect illegal drugs in sweat by using nanomaterials technology that amplify the optical signal of narcotics to a flexible, body-worn material. Led by Dr. Ho Sang Jung, the research unit is part of the Korea Institute of Materials Science(KIMS), a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT.
The technology enables fast and highly sensitive drug detection: the sweat patch is attached to the skin for a certain period of time and then irradiated with light for testing. It only takes one minute without requiring additional process.
Traditional drug detection process requires a complex method of extracting suspected drug components from ...
Online searches for mobile and isolated activities can help to predict later surges and declines in COVID-19 cases, a team of researchers has found. Its findings, based on a four-month analysis of online searches, offer a potential means to anticipate the pathways of the pandemic--before new infections are reported.
"This is a first step towards building a tool that can help predict COVID case surges by capturing higher-risk activities and intended mobility, which searches for gyms and in-person dining can illuminate," says Anasse Bari, a clinical assistant professor in computer science at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences ...
AUGUSTA, Ga (Feb. 8, 2021) - Starting with early childhood, otherwise healthy Black people show signs of slightly diminished heart muscle strength and a slightly higher blood pressure than their white counterparts, factors which may put them on a course for early development of congestive heart failure, researchers report.
The take-home message for parents and physicians is that, particularly for populations at high cardiovascular risk such as Black people, a close check should be kept on blood pressure starting in early adolescence, says the corresponding author of the study in Journal of the American Heart Association.
Children ...
