Greenovation across Boston

Has COVID19 also affected people’s desire to go green?

In order to test this hypothesis, we need to compare the trend of issuing green permits from Jan to July in both years of 2019 and 2020. Let’s get into it!
First, let’s see if the trend of issuing all types of permits has changed pre-covid vs during.

As apparent in the graph, the number of permits has droped drastically from Jan to Jun 2020 compared to its trend in 2019, but it still shows an increase starting from Apr. In the month of Apr alone, there is a 78% drop in the total number of permits. This is the highest drop reported yet.  But how does this trend look like only looking at energy related permits?


In this figure, we see the exact same pattern we witnessed for all other permits in general with no categories excluded. In the month of Apr again, there is a 77% drop in the total number of permits. This is the highest drop reported yet.  Another cool thing to notice here is that, in figure1, when looking at all permits, two lines counter eachother in early Feb as the fall continues while in figure2, when only looking at green permits, this happens in late Feb. The line actually flattens in Feb after a sharp fall in Jan and then shows an even sharper drop at the start of March. Yet again, the going back to normal process seems to start in early Apr for both graphs.