Do drivers of CO2 emission growth alter overtime and by the stage of economic development?

By Kangyin Dong, G. Hochman, G. Timilsina. 2020

158 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The rapid increase in anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in recent decades is a major concern because CO2 emissions are the main precursor of global warming. Thus, a clear understanding of the factors behind this increase is crucial for the design of policies that limit or at least stabilize global concentrations of CO2. In this study, we investigate factors driving the growth in global CO2 emissions over the last two decades (between 1997 and 2015) using the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method. The analysis shows that economic growth is the main driver of CO2 emissions during the 1997–2015 period. Population growth is also responsible for increased CO2 emissions, mainly in low-income countries. Without lowering energy intensity and increasing the deployment of clean and renewable energy, CO2 emissions during 1997–2015 would have been almost 50% higher than the observed level. The analysis also shows that the factors driving CO2 emission growth vary among countries from different per-capita income brackets. The analysis emphasizes the need to reduce CO2 more rapidly in highly industrialized countries and to continue to support reduction of CO2 in developing countries, per the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) Common But Differentiated Resposibilities.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c98ba818860713662c62475cd341788c1cbd610c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. T. Wiedmann
2. Klaus Hubacek
3. Robbie M. Andrew
4. D. Guan
5. J. Minx
6. G. P. Peters
7. Yong Geng
8. Laixiang Sun

In Environmental Engineering

1. T. Wiedmann
2. Robbie M. Andrew
3. Klaus Hubacek
4. J. Minx
5. D. Guan
6. G. P. Peters
7. Manfred Lenzen
8. Yong Geng

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. J. Minx
2. T. Wiedmann
3. Robbie M. Andrew
4. Klaus Hubacek
5. Laixiang Sun
6. Dominik Wiedenhofer
7. Yong Geng
8. Manfred Lenzen

Citations in the corpus

• A review of trends and drivers of greenhouse gas emissions by sector from 1990 to 2018 (2021, background): “…in the last decade, following the long-term trend (Burke et al 2015, Yao et al 2015, Malik et al 2016, Sanchez and Stern 2016, Stern et al 2017, Chang et al 2019, Dong et al 2019, 2020, Liobikiene and Butkus 2019, Liu et al 2019, Mardani et al 2019, Pan et al 2019, Parker and Bhatti 2020).”