How the pandemic lockdowns affected global CO2 levels by 'pausing' a lot of carbon emitting activities, such as transportation, tourism, work commuting, and others. What lessons can we learn from this global crisis in regard to reducing our carbon footprint by limiting non-essential activities, and how can we implement those in normal-day life? How can we be better prepared energy-wise, in the event of another future pandemic, or a different type of crisis? 

COVID-19 was an unexpected event that caused major disruptions in everyday life. One of the more interesting aspects of those disruptions, was the reduction in many non-essential carbon emitting activities, that - even for a few weeks - gave the planet more 'breathing space' and showed us that it's not impossible to curb our emissions.



An extensive research on this topic would be like answering the question "what if we could take perhaps the only positive results of the pandemic and implementing them into our world?". Through this research, we could draw meaningful conclusions for future unexpected crises that could also help us alter our carbon-emiting habits now and implement new strategies on how we consume energy and become more sustainable.

Without a doubt, COVID-19 was a major shock to everyone and affected every person on the planet and the planet itself also. It also showed us that even in this modern society we live in, unexpected global crises can occur at any moment and this pandemic is not going to be the last one.I believe that this event made us open our eyes to many problems that affect our modern global society, such as that we can cut back on carbon emissions if we really want to take action and not just kicking the bucket of 'saving the planet' down the future, when it's too late.



Thus, I think it's important, not just to research for new green technologies in the future, but also implement actual measures we can take now, as the pandemic showed us, to limit our carbon footprint.

In my experience in the master's of Sustainable Energy, I've taken courses that deal with many aspects of green technologies, from designing, to construction, to implementation. One important that caught my eye, was the policies regarding CO2 emissions that people and companies have to abide to. It's one thing to create an efficient green transportation system, and another thing to persuade people to use it instead of cars.



I believe that this analysis would be useful not just for countries, but companies as well, as they were impacted by this event heavily, and I would love to learn first-hand from a relevant company, what measures did they had to take during that time and how effective were they into limiting their emissions.