Is energy transition promoting the decoupling economic growth from emission growth? Evidence from the 186 countries

Abstract

A more comprehensive understanding the effects of energy transition on the decoupling economic growth from carbon emission growth at global- and national-scale can serve to develop more effective approaches towards to economic growth without emission growth. This paper combined decoupling index model and decomposition approach to identify decoupling state and uncover factors driving decoupling process in the world and 186 countries (divided into three groups: upper middle income-UMI, lower middle income-LMI and high income-HI) between 1990 and 2014. Regarding to decoupling state, world experienced weak decoupling (1990–2000), expansive negative decoupling and expansive coupling (2000–2011) and weak decoupling (2011–2014). HI initially realized the most desirable strong decoupling; while decoupling state of UMI and LMI were rather not ideal enough, especially LMI, changed violently and appeared no clear improving trend. Turning to decomposition results. energy transition had positively contributed to decoupling process of HI, while not in UMI and LMI. HI enjoyed better energy utilization efficiency, absolutely offsetting negative impact caused by economic scale to decoupling process. More importantly, UMI and LMI had great economic potential and will definitely emit tremendous carbon emission without taking appropriate measurements. Consequently, UMI and LMI shall take more responsibility to reduce carbon emission and actively accelerate the process of energy transition so as to achieve economic growth strongly decouple from carbon emission.