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

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.

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