Decoupling between CO2 emissions and economic growth in Brazil and in other countries

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine the change in behavior between CO2 emissions and the world economic growth in the years 2013 and 2014 which may represent decoupling, and, thus, contribute to the debate on alternative forms of reducing greenhouse effect. We established the 1990-2014 period as time axis because it presents two inflections in the growth curve of global CO2 emissions: one associated with the 2008 world crisis; and the other starting in 2013, discussed in this article. We selected six countries: the United States, Japan, Brazil, China, India, and Russia. In common, they share the same amount of CO2 emissions in world production. As a result, we identified changes related to the vectors gross domestic product and global CO2 emissions, favoring gas emissions reduction, as behavioral reflection of these two variables in the investigated countries which, if confirmed, points to structural changes between these two variables.

Keywords

• Energia. Emissão de CO2. Desacoplamento. Produto interno bruto. Desenvolvimento.