In 2020, greenhouse gas emissions from operators covered by the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) fell by 13.3% compared to 2019, the European Commission said on Friday 16 April.
This reduction includes an 11.2% decrease in emissions from stationary installations (power plants and industries) and an extraordinary 64.1% decrease in emissions from aviation, due to the shutdown of the aviation sector caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Emissions from industry fell by an average of 7%, says the Commission, with reductions in most sectors, including iron and steel (-11.7%), cement (-5.1%), chemicals (-4%) and refineries (-8.1%).
For the electricity sector, emissions have decreased by 14.9% compared to 2019. This reduction is mainly due to two factors, according to the institution: - reduction in electricity consumption due to the pandemic; - the transition from coal to natural gas-based electricity generation and the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.
For the Commission, while this sharp drop in emissions from installations covered by the ETS is partly due to Covid-19, it also shows that the ETS is one of the “most effective” European climate policy tools.
According to an analysis of ETS data published the same day by the think tank Ember, emissions from medium and large gas-fired power plants in the EU have exceeded those from lignite-fired plants for the first time, having already exceeded those from hard coal in 2019.
Their analysis estimates that gas accounted for a record 34% of total power sector emissions in 2020, an increase of 18 percentage points since 2013.
See the analysis from Ember: https://bit.ly/3tpuiig (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)