Thinking about this, COVID-19 both reduces CO2 emission in terms of transport, and increases energy demand on other ends (people working from home, using more electricity). It would be interesting to see a detailed breakdown of those effects.
> people working from home, using more electricity
Wait, how does this work? The electricity I use in the office comes from the same place as the electricity I use at home. I'm probably using a little less, as I have a smaller monitor at home.
Electricity is always produced with a large buffer (which is why you have lower electricity prices at night to encourage people to use it more, otherwise it's wasted capacity) - so I doubt there's any real increase in electricity production.
No, electric capacity has the built-in buffer you describe. But the main driver for ongoing GHG emissions from electricity generation is, of course, generating the electricity.
I'm sure there are no formal studies yet as to whether these work from home policies are a net increase in GHG, either within the utility industry specifically (i.e., excluding savings on cars) or overall, but my gut instinct is that it will be a net increase. Distribution to where residential homes are tends to be less efficient, and it's certainly less efficient to heat, cool, and light 1000 houses all day than 1 office building.
