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The effects of COVID-19 have had devasting effects on both health and economies in 2020. At the same time, the lockdown and the downturn of economic activity resulted in a decrease in energy consumption and an accompanying reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In this article, a comparison with the temperature adjustment of energy use is presented for the main carriers of electricity, natural gas, and oil products in the residential, tertiary, industry, and transport (road transport, domestic aviation, and navigation) sectors in 2020 against the previous two years in Greece, along with the corresponding emissions. As the comparison covers the entire year, both COVID peaks in the March–April and November–December periods and the corresponding lockdown effects as well as seasonal variations are included. The analysis shows a reduction, adjusted for temperature, of 3528 GWh in electricity and 10,286 GWh in transport, and an increase of 1916 GWh in heating and other final uses for a net 11,898 GWh decrease and a resulting emissions reduction of 3.48 MtCO2eq (1.29 MtCO2eq in electricity, 2.69 MtCO2eq in transport, and an increase of 0.54 MtCO2eq in heating), or 4.1%, from total national emissions in 2019. The effect is, to a considerable extent, the result of drastic tourist activity contraction, which is starkly evident in the electricity consumption in the Aegean islands. The comparison between the two lockdown periods brings out clear differences, with the reduction in the second one being considerably smaller as the population reverted, to a large extent, to pre-COVID behavior, which implies that no permanent gains from the COVID long-term impact toward decarbonization should be expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although climate change risks have been studied for a number of economic sectors, banking has received relatively little attention. The paper proposes a methodology and an associated decision-support tool for quantifying, in monetary terms, the risks for banks from the exposure of their loan recipients and/or applicants to climate change. The framework and tool are applied to a case study based on input from a Greek bank; results indicate that climate change risks for banks are considerable, and thus decision makers need to estimate their magnitude and possibly consider these within the credit management process, and in environmental planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]