Highland Energy Analytics, Boston, MA, USA.
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal, Karnataka, India.
Nat Commun. 2021 Aug 3;12(1):4675. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-24959-z.
Recent studies conclude that the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic decreased power sector CO emissions globally and in the United States. In this paper, we analyze the statistical significance of CO emissions reductions in the U.S. power sector from March through December 2020. We use Gaussian process (GP) regression to assess whether CO emissions reductions would have occurred with reasonable probability in the absence of COVID-19 considering uncertainty due to factors unrelated to the pandemic and adjusting for weather, seasonality, and recent emissions trends. We find that monthly CO emissions reductions are only statistically significant in April and May 2020 considering hypothesis tests at 5% significance levels. Separately, we consider the potential impact of COVID-19 on coal-fired power plant retirements through 2022. We find that only a small percentage of U.S. coal power plants are at risk of retirement due to a possible COVID-19-related sustained reduction in electricity demand and prices. We observe and anticipate a return to pre-COVID-19 CO emissions in the U.S. power sector.
最近的研究得出结论，全球冠状病毒（COVID-19）大流行在全球和美国减少了电力部门的 CO 排放。在本文中，我们分析了 2020 年 3 月至 12 月美国电力部门 CO 减排的统计显著性。我们使用高斯过程（GP）回归来评估在没有 COVID-19 的情况下，考虑到与大流行无关的因素引起的不确定性，并考虑到天气、季节性和近期排放趋势，CO 减排是否会以合理的概率发生。我们发现，仅在 2020 年 4 月和 5 月考虑到 5%显着性水平的假设检验，每月的 CO 减排才具有统计学意义。另外，我们考虑了 COVID-19 对 2022 年之前燃煤电厂退役的潜在影响。我们发现，由于 COVID-19 相关的电力需求和价格持续下降，只有一小部分美国燃煤电厂面临退役风险。我们观察到并预计美国电力部门的 CO 排放量将恢复到 COVID-19 之前的水平。
