Sep. 26, 2018

Decoupling analysis between economic growth and CO2 emissions: Insights from estimation of consumption-based CO2 emissions

Historically a strong positive correlation between GDP and CO₂ has been observed globally. Some argue that positive correlation has vanished recent years, meaning that GDP growth and CO₂ emissions might have "decoupled". However, possibility has been pointed out that developed countries might avoid emissions by importing CO₂ embodied in goods and services through international trade, instead of producing them within their countries. However, in nations or regions with developed service economy for instance, apparent CO₂ emissions (production-based; CO₂ emissions in common statistics) may seem smaller due to the increase in import, thus analysis of consumption-based emissions including CO₂ emissions embodied in trade (net import) is important.

In this analysis of major countries emissions in global economy, we estimate CO₂ emissions embodied in trade as well as consumption-based CO₂ emissions from energy by nation between 2000 and 2014 using latest statistics, and analyze their factors and time-series changes.

Decoupling has been seemingly observed in some nations in EU (such as Sweden or UK) or EU average, but our estimates show that deepened foreign-dependency of these nations on imports, which is caused by shifts in industrial structure, has a significant impact. CO₂ emissions embodied in their imports are so large that their contribution to the global emissions reduction seem to be minor.

Analyzing consumption-based CO₂ emissions shall offer an important information when discussing effective countermeasures for global CO₂ emission reduction.

• Decoupling analysis between economic growth and CO₂ emissions: Insights from estimation of consumption-based CO₂ emissions(PDF file 1,280KB)