Evaluation of decoupling of GDP and energy in Central Asia

Abstract

Currently, economic growth remains the main criterion of development. However, it does come along with threats to the environment, due to its link to the increased energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. Decoupling can be used to break this link and stop jeopardizing the environment in the favor of economic progress. This paper focuses on the decoupling between economic growth and energy consumption in each of five Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – from 1990 to 2014. The Tapio decoupling model was implemented in order to determine the decoupling states for each country. Gross domestic product (GDP) was used to represent the economic growth, and the total primary energy supply (TPES) described the environmental pressure. These data were obtained from the IKE World Energy Balances. Both the GDP and the TPES of most of the Central Asian countries had a parabolic trend of initial drop and further increase during the timespan analyzed. This observation can be explained by the collapse of USSR and the transition to market economy. The results of the decoupling analysis can be divided into two stages for Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, and into three stages for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, with several different decoupling states observed during each stage. According to the results, the main decoupling states in Central Asia were expansive negative decoupling, expansive coupling, weak decoupling, and strong decoupling. The analysis showed that there is a serious environmental pressure on the economic development in Central Asia.