US industrial sector decoupling of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions under COVID: durability and decarbonization

Abstract

Abstract The 2020 response to the coronavirus pandemic has had a profound and rapid effect on social behavior, the economy, and consumption. Associated declines in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have prompted calls to action to use the pandemic experience to accelerate decarbonization. Such action depends on understanding how GHG emissions reductions were achieved and whether they can be sustained. In this work, we focus on the industrial sector by comparing United States (US) industrial energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and key materials production between the first two quarters (Q1 and Q2) of 2020, when pandemic response became active, relative to 2019. We show a striking decoupling between energy use and GHG emissions in the US industrial sector between Q2 2020 and Q2 2019, yet pandemic decarbonization in the industrial sector is unlikely to be durable. Observations suggest three major takeaways for US industrial decarbonization: (1) efforts to decarbonize transportation will contribute to industrial decarbonization due to the large impacts of petroleum refining; (2) increasing demands for materials that use energy resources as feedstocks (e.g., plastics) can result in an apparent decoupling in energy demand and GHG emissions that is not indicative of a durable pathway for reducing GHG emissions; and (3) temporary reduction in demand for industrial infrastructure materials would have resulted in greater reductions of GHG emissions than the relative change in fuels used during this period. Cumulatively, while shifts that would lower GHG emissions occurred, no substantial structural changes to industrial activity were observed. As such, society still requires systemic change to interdependencies on other sectors and the methods we use to produce and deploy our industrial materials.