Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has strongly affected economies and human lifestyles globally. The changes observed in domestic energy consumption patterns have had an impact on household greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since GHG emissions inventories are only available at the country level and at annual intervals, most studies have calculated the local emission variations by extrapolating annual emissions with smaller time and territorial scale consumption data. This research presents a bottom-up method, based on the exploitation of a survey addressed to 1200 households, that provides the information to calculate directly the variation in their energy-related GHG emissions, without the need for extrapolations. This method has been applied to four medium-sized Chilean cities with serious air quality problems. Given the high correlation between atmospheric pollutants such as NO_x and CO₂ emissions, we estimate that before the appearance of COVID-19, per capita CO₂ emissions were already high. The results show that space heating-related GHG emissions have increased moderately (between 1 and 6%), while emissions from electricity and gas consumption for non-heating uses have increased significantly (between 8 and 23%). This has harmed the household economy, highlighting the importance of considering socioeconomic aspects when assessing the impact of COVID-19 in its entirety.

摘要

2019 年冠状病毒病 (COVID-19) 大流行严重影响了全球经济和人类生活方式。在国内能源消费模式中观察到的变化对家庭温室气体 (GHG) 排放产生了影响。由于温室气体排放清单仅在国家层面和年度间隔可用，大多数研究通过使用较小的时间和地区规模的消费数据推断年度排放量来计算当地排放变化。这项研究提出了一种自下而上的方法，基于对 1200 户家庭的调查，该方法提供了直接计算其能源相关温室气体排放变化的信息，无需外推。该方法已应用于智利四个空气质量问题严重的中型城市。_x和 CO ₂排放量，我们估计在 COVID-19 出现之前，人均CO ₂排放量已经很高。结果表明，与空间供暖相关的温室气体排放量适度增加（1% 至 6% 之间），而非供暖用途的电力和天然气消耗的排放量显着增加（8% 至 23% 之间）。这损害了家庭经济，突出了在评估 COVID-19 的整体影响时考虑社会经济方面的重要性。