Lockdowns and Energy Consumption

Industrial production might have fallen slightly across the world last year and as we see more waves of Covid-19 hit different parts of the world I’d think industries have gotten better at keeping productions up. So even with more measures kicking back in to keep people safe, industries will probably still continue to hum along.

Energy consumption across domestic sector definitely rose quite significantly as people worked from home, binged on Netflix. Datacenters probably worked harder across the world as well and even more content gets put up online by new content creators and new exchanges online that replaced what was previously offline.

Transport is probably the sector where energy consumption fell drastically last year. First with air travel, but probably also with some longer-range land transportation as well. Though logistics probably continue to move along and delivery apps for food, groceries and all that might still continued running.

Resource use in terms of masks and takeout containers, plastic bags definitely increased. So waste management cost might have risen for most part. Environment wise overall things might not have been so different in terms of moving away from the longer term trajectory.

The opportunity here is rethinking the way and the amount of energy we are consuming, now that we might be spending more time at home, and industries might do with less people being at work. Likewise, if we are taking out more often, perhaps we could use reusable containers more. We might be able to cultivate better habits that set the world on a different trajectory.