Epidemics and electricity CO 2 emissions: a feedback investigation
- PDF / 257,282 Bytes
- 7 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 5 Downloads / 220 Views
Epidemics and electricity CO2 emissions: a feedback investigation Ya-Hui Huang 1 & Ke Wang 2 & Yiwei Wang 2 & Chun-ping Chang 3 Received: 3 August 2020 / Accepted: 16 November 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract We examine the short-term and long-term causal effects between epidemics and electricity CO2 emissions by using panel data from 30 countries over the period of 1990 to 2017. The results show that there is bidirectional relationship between epidemics and electricity CO2 emissions, especially in OECD and Asian countries. Keywords Epidemics . Air quality . Panel data JEL codes Q53 . I18
Introduction The emergence and spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in 2019 make an epidemic once again become the focus of global attention (Anderson et al. 2020; Velavan and Meyer 2020). There are various causes for the outbreak of epidemics. Despite the pathological explanation, some scholars have paid attention to the relationship between environmental quality and epidemic diseases 30 years ago. Leggett (1990) thinks that the change in air quality is bringing about a secondary effect that cannot be ignored—that is, it provides more favorable living conditions for epidemics. Since then, the discussion on the relationship between epidemics and environment has continued to expand. Saadi (2010) believes that long-term exposure to air pollution will significantly increase the risk of respiratory epidemics, while Thiering and Heinrich (2015) indicate a link between air pollution and type 2 diabetes (T2D). At the same time, epidemics also bring about environmental changes. After the COVID-19 outbreak, the topic of epidemics and environment has seen a trend of further expansion. Craven et al. (2020) find that NOx pollution in Beijing decreased by 59% during the period of COVID-19’s impact. Chen et al. (2020) also believe that COVID-19 actually * Chun-ping Chang [email protected] 1
Graduate Institute of Adult Education, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
2
School of Economics and Finance, Xi’an Jiao Tong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China
3
Shih Chien University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
improved air quality due to the reduction of travel traffic. Therefore, it seems to us that it is necessary to pay attention to the relationship between epidemics and environmental quality. On the one hand, it can deepen our understanding of epidemics and bring inspiration to prevent and control their spread. On the other hand, environmental governance is an eternal topic. It is necessary to remind people to treat environmental problems more carefully after COVID-19. We argue in this paper that air pollution accelerates the expansion of the epidemic by creating an appropriate environment for transmission, and the spread of the epidemic also has an impact on the environment by changing people’s way of life and production (Kumar et al. 2020). Most of the recent literature has focused only on cross-sectional analysis and data from a few countries, such as China and the USA, to investigate the impact of air quality on
Data Loading...
