Does Staying at Home during the COVID-19 Pandemic Help Reduce CO2 Emissions?

Abstract

Quarantining at home during the COVID-19 pandemic significantly restricted human mobility such as visits to parks, grocery stores, workplaces, retail places, and transit stations. In this research, we analyzed how the changes in human mobility during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, from February to April 2020 (i.e., between 17 February and 30 April 2020), affected the daily CO2 emissions for countries having a high number of coronavirus cases at that time. Our daily time-series analyses indicated that when average hours spent at home increased, the amount of daily CO2 emissions declined significantly. The findings suggest that for all three countries (the US, India, and France), a 1% increase in the average duration spent in residential areas reduced daily CO2 emissions by 0.17 Mt, 0.10 Mt, and 0.01 Mt, respectively, during the first wave period. Thus, confining people into their homes contributes to cutting down CO2 emissions remarkably. However, the study also reveals those activities such as visiting parks and going grocery shopping increase CO2 emissions, suggesting that unnecessary human mobility is undesirable for the environment.