This is an encouraging sign for clean energy transitions globally, although emissions growth last year from the continued shift towards larger vehicles such as SUVs offset the decrease in emissions from higher electric car sales. Electric cars bucked this trend, however, with their sales growing by more than 40% in 2020 to over 3 million, largely driven by policy support in the European Union and stimulus measures in the People’s Republic of China (“China”). The impact of the pandemic on global car sales was even greater: these fell by close to 15%. Road transport was also severely affected, with its demand for oil dropping 10% relative to 2019. This decline is equivalent to taking around 100 million conventional cars off the road. In contrast to pre-crisis levels, emissions from international aviation fell by almost 45% or 265 Mt CO2 across the year to a level last seen in 1999. With various travel advisories and border restrictions, international aviation was the sector hardest hit in 2020, with global flight activity reaching a low in April 2020 of 70% below the level in the same month a year earlier. The decline in CO2 emissions from oil use in the transport sector accounted for well over 50% of the total global drop in CO2 emissions in 2020, with restrictions on movement at local and international levels leading to a near 1 100 Mt drop in emissions from the sector, down almost 14% from 2019 levels. The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the largest-ever decline in global emissionsĪ common theme across all economies is the scale of the impact of the pandemic and lockdown measures on transport activity. Meanwhile, low-carbon fuels and technologies, in particular, solar PV and wind, reached their highest ever annual share of the global energy mix, increasing it by more than one percentage point to over 20%. The drop in road transport activity accounted for 50% of the decline in global oil demand, and the slump in the aviation sector for around 35%. Global emissions from oil use plummeted by well over 1 100 Mt CO2, down from around 11 400 Mt in 2019. Oil’s annual decline was its largest ever, accounting for more than half of the drop in global emissions. Demand for fossil fuels was hardest hit in 2020 – especially oil, which plunged 8.6%, and coal, which dropped by 4%. In absolute terms, the decline in emissions of almost 2 000 million tonnes of CO2 is without precedent in human history – broadly speaking, this is the equivalent of removing all of the European Union’s emissions from the global total. The pandemic defined energy and emissions trends in 2020 – it drove down fossil fuel consumption for much of the year, whereas renewables and electric vehicles, two of the main building blocks of clean energy transitions, were largely immune.Īs primary energy demand dropped nearly 4% in 2020, global energy-related CO2 emissions fell by 5.8% according to the latest statistical data, the largest annual percentage decline since World War II.
The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis had an impact on almost every aspect of how energy is produced, supplied, and consumed around the world.