Decomposition analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union

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.