In addition to its terrible human and health consequences, the Covid-19 pandemic could also have an impact on the implementation of the European Green Deal and, more broadly, on the European Union's climate ambitions. Will the overall impact be positive or negative? While it seems impossible today to give a definitive answer to this question, as there are many factors to be taken into consideration, EUROPE has explored a number of avenues.
Emissions down
An already observable effect of coronavirus on the environment is its impact on CO2 emissions and air pollution.
According to the latest scientific data, the pandemic is currently leading to a decrease in CO2 and NO2 emissions due to the industrial slowdown as well as a drop in air and car travel.
For example, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air estimates that China's CO2 emissions decreased by at least a quarter between 3 February and 1 March compared to 2019.
In Europe, German industry is expected to emit 10 to 25 million tonnes less CO2 than in normal business times, estimated the think tank Agora Energiewende.
On the matter of NO2 emissions in China, NASA's Earth Observatory has calculated that they have decreased by 10% to 30% compared to the same period in 2019, first around Wuhan, the epicentre of the epidemic, and then in the rest of the country.
In northern Italy, the Copernicus atmospheric monitoring service (CAMS) observed a gradual decrease in NO2 concentrations of about 10% per week between mid-February and mid-March.
Nevertheless, according to some, despite these few positive short-term effects for the environment, the pandemic actually represents a threat to the Green Deal.
This is the opinion of Suzana Carp, a member of the Sandbag think tank, and François Gemenne, a researcher and member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
According to the latter, "the coronavirus pandemic is likely to be a climate catastrophe over the long term".
Risk of an emissions rebound
Once the crisis is over, there is indeed a risk that greenhouse gas emissions will pick up again as economic activity restarts, warns Mr Gemenne, stressing that "emissions always tend to rebound after a crisis".
"A series of governments will seek to save their industries through their stimulus packages, especially fossil fuel industries, which are suffering greatly from this crisis", he said.
He also emphasised, "The climate needs a sustained and steady decline in greenhouse gas emissions, not a 'fallow year'.
The Green Deal wiped out?
Carp and Gemenne are also concerned that the coronavirus crisis could lead to a challenge to the Green Deal in the name of economic recovery.
A fear shared by Sofía López Piqueres, climate and energy policy analyst for the European Policy Centre think tank:
"Given that the EU Council has proven ineffective in the past when dealing with multiple crises at the same time, the risk of the current context is that its most reactionary members such as the Czech Prime Minister, Andrej Babiš, will manage to fully impose its vision and derail European climate efforts", she told us.
In a recent interview with journalists, Mr Babiš said that " Europe should forget about the Green Deal now and focus instead on the coronavirus".
According to Mrs Carp, it was foreseeable that "politicians would use the coronavirus opportunistically in an attempt to move away from the climate ambitions of the EU".
She added: "However, what the coronavirus teaches us is that the sooner we act, the less damage is caused. This also applies to the climate crisis, which is no longer in its infancy".
Falling carbon prices. Another indirect consequence of the coronavirus crisis is that the price of carbon under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has collapsed in the last 2 weeks by almost 40%, reaching €15.45/tonne on 23 March, its lowest level in 2 years.
The main reason for this drop is that many industrial companies now need fewer permits to cover their emissions, as emissions have fallen due to the slowdown in industrial activity (and therefore energy consumption) caused by the coronavirus.
In addition, carbon credits can be banked and used at any time in the future. There is therefore a risk of a build-up of stored carbon permits, which would help to keep the price of carbon low.
However, it is widely accepted that, to be effective, the carbon price must be at least EUR 30 per tonne.
While there is a mechanism to absorb an overabundance of permits, called the 'Market Stability Reserve' (MSR), it is designed to manage surpluses accumulated over the years.
"The current configuration of the ETS system, and of MSR in particular, is not adapted to deal with current or future excess permits due, for example, to coronavirus", says Kaisa Amaral, a member of the NGO 'Carbon Market Watch'.
In a press release published on 23 March, the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) think tank believes that "the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) is certainly the most exposed climate policy instrument to the COVID-19 shock".
According to CERRE, a new proposal to stabilise the carbon pricing system must therefore be at the top of the European Commission's "post-Covid-19 agenda". (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)