Coronavirus: less greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, but will not last long

In 2020 there will be less greenhouse gas emissions also in Italy due to the coronavirus, but this decrease could only be short-term because there is no structural decarbonisation process. This is what emerges from the report '10 key trend on climate - 2019 preview data for Italy 'created by Italy for Climate, the initiative of the Foundation for sustainable development which is gathering adhesions from some companies particularly sensitive to the theme of changes climatic, including Erg, Ing, e2i, Conou, illy, Davines.
But the report also says "this decline could only be short-term", with "the pandemic" which "lays bare the fragility of our economies in the face of global crises".

The current health emergency is having "significant impacts on the transport, consumption and production activities of all the affected countries, including Italy, and this should translate into a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, primarily CO2". But "without a process of structural decarbonization" emissions will start growing again. It is also explained that "2019 was a year for Italy with more shadows than lights on the climate front": "a higher temperature increase than in the rest of the world is confirmed, the extreme events related to climate change have been over 1,600 (they were less than 150 just over 10 years ago), greenhouse gas emissions decreased by less than 1% compared to the previous year ", and we" lost the historic leadership on renewable sources for electricity generation in favor of Germany. "

Some "encouraging signs" come "from the reduction of the costs of electric renewables" and from the drop in the production of electricity from coal, which went from "49 billion kWh in 2012 to around 20 estimated in 2019". The global crisis for coronavirus, explains Edo Ronchi, president of the Foundation for sustainable development, "also makes us think about other possible potentially global crises" such as for the climate. What happened in China, i.e. the reduction of emissions by about a quarter in these weeks, could also be repeated in Italy: but, warns Ronchi, "the data updated up to December 2019 have shown us emissions that have been practically stationary for about six years. This means that there is no real reduction process in progress. History teaches us that after a serious economic crisis and a significant drop in emissions, these could return to grow as and perhaps even more than before ". The demonstration would come from the data of the last great financial crisis: "In 2009 a drop in global GDP of about 1.7% translated into a drop in emissions of 1.2% - he concludes - but the following year with a 4.3% GDP, emissions rebounded to 5.8% ".