Is it possible to decouple CO2 emissions and GDP?
The best for the global economy would obviously be if CO 2 emissions could be reduced without reducing GDP, which could result from a change in the composition of GDP (with an increase in the weight of goods and services, the production of which consumes little energy) and technological progress (declining energy intensity, increasing weight of renewable energies). For the United States, the EU-28, Japan, China, emerging countries as a whole other than China and the world, we look at the links between: GDP growth and energy consumption growth; Energy consumption growth and fossil energy consumption growth; Fossil energy consumption growth and CO 2 emissions growth; And, altogether, GDP growth and CO 2 emissions growth. We see that: Overall, the gap between GDP growth and CO 2 emissions growth is increasing, but very little and insufficiently; The developments that must be corrected first are: Overall energy efficiency, which is too low (United States, EU, emerging countries excluding China); The use of fossil energies (Japan, emerging countries excluding China).