Decomposition Analysis of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the European Union
Magdaléna Drastichová
VŠB-Technical University of Ostrava, Faculty of Economics, Department of Regional and Environmental Economics, Sokolská 33, 701 21 Ostrava, Czech Republic (Czechia)
Abstract
Climate change is a significant threat to sustainable development (SD). Using the Log-Mean Divisia Index Method (LMDI) a decomposition of the data on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the European Union (EU) in 2000 -2013 is carried out. To detect if decoupling of the environmental variable represented by the GHG emissions from the economic variable represented by the GDP was taking place in the EU economy, the changes of the GHG emissions were divided into three effects. These factors include the economic activity (scale), the composition or structure of the EU economy with respect to the countries, and GHG intensity of the countries. The aim of the paper is to detect if decoupling of the GHG emissions from the GDP development in the EU took place and to detect the factors of this development. The intensity effect was mainly responsible for the reduction of the GHG emissions in the EU while the scale effect contributed to their increase. The role of the composition effect was only marginal; however, it was positive. As the intensity effect often showed the high negative values, the total effect was often negative as well, which means that decoupling of GHG emissions from GDP took place.
JEL Classification: Q51, Q54, Q56, F64
Keywords:
decomposition, climate change, European Union (EU), Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGs), Log-Mean Divisia Index Method (LMDI), Kyoto Protocol, sustainable developmentReferences
ANG B. W., 2004, Decomposition analysis for policymaking in energy: which is the preferred method?, in: Energy Policy, vol. 32, no 9, p.1131-1139.
Google Scholar
ANG B.W., CHOI K. H., 1997, Decomposition of Aggregate Energy and Gas Emission Intensities for Industry: A Refined Divisia Index Method, in: Energy Journal, vol.18, no 3, p.59-73.
Google Scholar
ANG B. W., ZHANG, F. Q., 2000, Survey of Index Decomposition Analysis in Energy and Environmental Studies, in: Energy, vol. 25, no 12, p. 1149-1176.
Google Scholar
ANG B.W., ZHANG F. Q., 1999, Inter-regional Comparisons of Energy-related CO2 Emissions using the Decomposition Technique, in: Energy, vol. 24, no 4, p. 297-305.
Google Scholar
BRŮHA, J., ŠČASNÝ, M., 2006, Economic Analysis of Driving Forces of Environmental Burden during the Transition Process: EKC hypothesis testing in the Czech Republic. Paper presented at the 3rd Annual Congress of Association of Environmental and Resource Economics (AERE), Kyoto, 4-7 July, 2006.
Google Scholar
DALY H. E., 1996, Beyond Growth: he Economics of Sustainable Development, Beacon Press, Boston.
Google Scholar
DRASTICHOVÁ M., 2014, Monitoring Sustainable Development and Decoupling in the EU, in: Ekonomická revue - Central European Review of Economic Issues, vol. 17, no 3, p.125‒140.
Google Scholar
EU, 2012, Consolidated Version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Official Journal of the European Union, C 326/132.
Google Scholar
EUROSTAT, 2016a, Data. Database. Economy and Finance, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database (10.12.2016).
Google Scholar
EUROSTAT, 2016b, Sustainable development indicators. Indicators, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi/indicators (10.12.2016).
Google Scholar
EUROSTAT, 2016c, Sustainable development indicators. Indicators. Climate change and energy, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi/indicators/climate-change-and-energy (15.12.2016).
Google Scholar
EUROSTAT, 2014,. Eurostat Metadata. Annual National Accounts (nama_10) http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/en/nama_10_esms.htm (16.12.2016).
Google Scholar
FEEM, 2011, Sustainability Index. Methodological Report http://www.feemsi.org/documents/methodological_report2011.pdf (10.12.2016).
Google Scholar
HEDIGER W., 2006. Weak and Strong Sustainability, Environmental Conservation and Economic Growth, in: Natural Resource Modeling, vol. 19, no 3, pp. 359-394.
Google Scholar
CHERP A., KOPTEVA I., MNATSAKANIAN R., 2003, Economic transition and environmental sustainability: effects of economic restructuring on air pollution in the Russian Federation, in: Journal of Environ-mental Management, vol. 68, no 2, p.141-151.
Google Scholar
IPCC, 2014, Summary for policymakers. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, p. 1-32.
Google Scholar
OECD, 2002, Sustainable Development. Indi-cators to measure Decoupling of Environmental Pressure from Economic Growth. [SG/SD (2002) 1/FINAL.], OECD, Paris.
Google Scholar
OECD, 2003, OECD Environmental Indicators. Development, Measurement and Use [Refe-rence Paper], OECD, Paris.
Google Scholar
PROOPS J. L. R., FABER M., WAGENHALS G., 1993. Reducing CO2 Emissions: a Comparative Input-Output Study for Germany and the UK. Springer, Berlin.
Google Scholar
CHUNG H. S., 1998, Industrial Structure and Source of Carbon Dioxide Emissions in East Asia: Estimation and Comparison, in: Energy and Environment, vol. 9 no 5, p. 509-533.
Google Scholar
SEIBEL S., 2003, Decomposition analysis of carbon dioxide-emission changes in Germany - Conceptual framework and empirical results. European Communities, Luxembourg.
Google Scholar
TSUCHIMOTO F., ŠČASNÝ M., 2011, Decomposition Analysis of Air Pollutant in the Czech Republic. Paper submitted to 18th Annual Conference of the European association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE), Roma 29 June – 2 July 2011.
Google Scholar
UNFCCC, 2015, Kyoto Protocol, UN.
Google Scholar
VEHMAS J., LUUKKANEN J., PIHLAJAMÄKI M., 2008, Decomposition Analysis of EU Sustainable Development Indicators. Final Report of the DECOIN project (Development and Comparison of Sustainability Indicators), Deliverable D3.1 of WP3, Turku School of Economics, Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku.
Google Scholar
VIGUIER L. 1999, Emissions of SO2, NOx and CO2 in Transition Economies: Emission Inventories and Divisia index Analysis, in: Energy Journal, vol. 20, no 2, p.59-87.
Google Scholar
WCED, 1987, Our common future. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Google Scholar
XU X. Y., ANG B. W., 2013, Index Decomposition Analysis applied to CO2 Emission Studies, in: Ecological Economics, vol. 93, p.313-329.
Google Scholar
Authors
Magdaléna DrastichováVŠB-Technical University of Ostrava, Faculty of Economics, Department of Regional and Environmental Economics, Sokolská 33, 701 21 Ostrava, Czech Republic Czechia
Statistics
Abstract views: 14PDF downloads: 5
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.