Difference and Cluster Analysis on the Carbon Dioxide Emissions in China During COVID-19 Lockdown via a Complex Network Model

Abstract

The continuous increase of carbon emissions is a serious challenge all over the world, and many countries are striving to solve this problem. Since 2020, a widespread lockdown in the country to prevent the spread of COVID-19 escalated, severely restricting the movement of people and unnecessary economic activities, which unexpectedly reduced carbon emissions. This paper aims to analyze the carbon emissions data of 30 provinces in the 2020 and provide references for reducing emissions with epidemic lockdown measures. Based on the method of time series visualization, we transform the time series data into complex networks to find out the hidden information in these data. We found that the lockdown would bring about a short-term decrease in carbon emissions, and most provinces have a short time point of impact, which is closely related to the level of economic development and industrial structure. The current results provide some insights into the evolution of carbon emissions under COVID-19 blockade measures and valuable insights into energy conservation and response to the energy crisis in the post-epidemic era.