Corona Lockdowns Lead to Less Carbon Emissions and More Renewable Energy

The COVID-19 lockdowns led to a reduction in demand for energy as restaurants, malls and offices temporarily closed. Thanks to this, the United States is – for the very first time – projected to produce far more electricity from renewable sources than from coal!

This year, coal is predicted to produce merely 19 percent of the country’s electricity, largely due to the lockdown causing oil to fall to all-time-low prices and oil company OPEC to cut global oil production.

“It’s an astounding milestone, since coal was generating more than twice as much power as renewables as recently as 2016,” says Daniel Cohan, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Rice University, to InsideClimate News. “Coal is facing a triple whammy this year as renewables grow, demand shrinks, and natural gas stays cheap.”

Additionally, the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects carbon emissions from energy to drop by 11 percent this year – the biggest reduction in seven decades, according to the New York Times.