Steve MacLellan

Forecasters are predicting that coronavirus disruptions will lead to the largest annual drop in carbon dioxide emissions ever recorded—but multiple data challenges make any such estimates extremely tentative, and without post-pandemic recovery efforts that prioritize and accelerate the zero-carbon shift, the plunge in emissions will prove nothing more than a brief pit stop on the road to climate ruin, analysts warn.

As for attributing any drop in fossil fuel demand in March to the ongoing pandemic, “a long list of confounding factors cloud the picture,” including “the mild winter across Europe and North America,” which reduced heating prices for industry, along with clear skies and windy weather that “boosted the output of existing wind farms and solar parks relative to last year.”

And then there are the “second-order effects”—like the Saudi Arabia–Russia contretemps that sent oil prices into freefall, and the “unprecedented nature” of the pandemic, which has made it impossible to predict in terms of duration, or the length of regional lockdowns.

Finally, whether the eventual reduction in 2020 emissions is 1,600 Mt or 3,600, either will be woefully insufficient to correct the climate crisis.