Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak: CO2 and SO2 Emission Reduction over China

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has disorganized humans economically, physically, socially and psychologically. More than 353,334 people died in China and about 5,593,631 cases are confirmed so far (with thousands of new cases per day) all over the world and others are still quarantined or confined. Beyond such odd impact with the geometrical death rate, this paper gives a different consideration of the pandemic effects, such as the environment preservation during the height of the pandemic which is a positive impact. In fact, because of the lockdown all over the world, commercial airlines have stopped operating for at least 3 months. This represents about 257.5 MMT of CO 2 emission that has been so far avoided. On the other hand, the consumption of fossil fuel or other fossil energy sources has been reduced. This paper shows that in 63 days of lockdown, 3458.175 tons of SO 2 and 1745.33 MT of CO 2 were not emitted into the atmosphere because of the drop in coal consumption only in China.