The short-term impacts of COVID-19 outbreak on carbon emissions: causal evidence from China

Sitong Pan

Applied Economics Letters, 2025, vol. 32, issue 2, 263-269

Abstract: This study precisely examines the short-term impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on CO2 emissions through a sharp regression discontinuity design based on daily emissions data of 31 provinces in China. I find that the COVID-19 outbreak leads to an 18.4% CO2 emissions reduction in China. The total reduction effects are mainly attributed to the power, domestic aviation, ground transport and industry sectors. Additionally, the reduction effects across different provinces are almost uniform and it takes approximately 9 weeks for China to alleviate it. Furthermore, the positive spillover effects of CO2 emissions weakened after the COVID-19 outbreak due to the strict lockdown policies in China. Overall, these findings offer novel insights into the impacts of major public health emergencies on CO2 emissions and inform future CO2 emissions reduction goal settings in developing countries.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2023.2266566

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