adminJeffrey Gogo Climate Story
The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that global carbon emissions will fall to their lowest level in a decade this year, by a record 8 percent.
That’s because lockdowns in response to the coronavirus pandemic have kept industries quiet, particularly the large emitting sectors of electricity generation, oil extraction and processing and transportation.
But IEA executive director Fatih Birol was quick to caution: “Given the number of deaths and the economic trauma. . . this historic decline in global emissions is absolutely nothing to cheer”
Carbon emissions are the biggest driver of climate change. The effects of the science are already evident, with SADC warming at a rate much faster than the global average, which could result in frequent and more severe climate-related disasters, a new report shows.
In 2019, temperatures across Southern Africa were 2°C above the global average. Worldwide, the past year was the second warmest year on record, with world temperatures averaging 1,1 percent above pre-industrial levels, the World Meteorological Organisation says. Only 2016 was hotter.
According to the agency, the emissions decline this year will be six times bigger compared to the previous record in the 2008 recession.
Electricity demand is set to decline by 5 percent throughout the world – its largest drop since the 1930s Great Depression, it said.
Renewable energy companies have remained resilient. Low-carbon sources are on track to deliver a record-breaking 40 percent of the global electricity market in 2020, the IEA says.
We have previously highlighted how Covid-19 was likely to impact Zimbabwe’s carbon footprint. But data on the actual potential decline is scarce in these shores. We hypothesise though, with a fair degree of accuracy.
As previously mentioned, the forced closure of businesses (which has meant more electricity for households) under coronavirus could mean a slow down in pollution generated via industrial processes.
It may not necessarily result in a reduction in emissions at source, that is those greenhouse gases generated during fossil-based power production because the same amount of electricity is still being produced, only redirected towards household and hospital use.
The bulk of Zimbabwe’s electricity is currently generated from fossil fuels (and imports) following water shortages at the main hydro-power station at Kariba, whose production has now been reduced to a fraction of its usual generation capacity.
In good times, hydro-power accounts for about 60 percent of national power generation, meaning much of the country’s electricity is clean, but the drive towards significantly higher greener thresholds is relentless, as highlighted in the Government’s climate plan under the Paris Agreement.
As demand for diesel and petrol declines, the domestic climate sector benefits.
A near blackout on public and private road transport as well as the grounding of the airline industry (with its opaque emissions statistics) is temporary victory for the climate.
The coronavirus pandemic has expanded “our imagination of the possibilities for responding to climate change, and a lot of the measures we’re going to take to get out of this pandemic crisis can help with that.”
Responses to Covid-19 such as those on Government bailouts will have to be directed towards a green and just recovery, particularly at a time when much of what “seemed natural and normal and inevitable about the way the world works” no longer does.
God is faithful.
Online Reporter