Amid the upheaval, there might be a silver lining – an opportunity for Europe to come closer to achieving global sustainability goals.
Since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, good news has been in short supply. The enormous social and economic consequences of the pandemic are becoming clearer by the day, and we’ll be feeling the effects on our lives and livelihoods for decades to come.
Yet amid the immense human and economic toll, something else is also becoming clearer: our skies. Life without car or air travel has allowed nature to reassert itself, leaving cities typically shrouded in smog suddenly crystal clear amid plunging emissions. Industrial energy consumption is down. People are rediscovering life on foot, strolling through parks and nature preserves. COVID-19 may present a window of opportunity – perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime chance – to dramatically accelerate progress toward achieving global sustainability targets, such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
We hope so. But we also know these environmental gains could prove fleeting, for two basic reasons. First, they result from dramatic changes in personal behavior, such as shelter-at-home orders reducing travel, which have in turn drastically cut economic activity. And second, once those enforced restrictions are lifted, some return to “normalcy” is assured. The big question is just how much personal and economic activity will rebound and, in turn, what that means for the planet. We believe there’s an opportunity to accelerate the achievement of climate goals, but it’s no time to relax existing policies or objectives.
Risks and opportunities
Due to declining power demand and reduced manufacturing, CO2 emissions within the EU Emission Trading System (ETS) scheme are expected to fall by nearly 400 million metric tons in 2020, according to a preliminary forecast issued by ICIS. Yet as earlier crises have shown, these temporary environmental improvements tend to be short-lived without wider structural changes to our societies and economies. Indeed, while the EU has kept emissions on a generally downward trajectory since the 2008 financial crisis, global emissions only dipped temporarily during that period before quickly returning to record highs1.
If the economic incentives and legal requirements around consumption and production remain the same, businesses and citizens will adopt the (over)consumption practices that brought us to unsustainable levels of pollution and resource depletion in the first place.