Evaluation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Related Aspects: Case of the Czech Republic

Abstract

The most important drivers of increasing greenhouse gas emissions are increasing world’s population, economic development resulting in higher level of productions and consumption, but also unanticipated increases in the energy intensity of GDP and in the carbon intensity of energy. The EU committed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 20% until 2020 or 40% until 2030 compared to 1990 levels of the Kyoto Protocol. The Czech Republic enlarged EU in 2004 as a country from Eastern Europe where usually the heavy industries or agriculture prevail over other sectors. The aim of the paper was an evaluation of the development of greenhouse gas emissions and related aspects in the industry of the Czech Republic. Based on the results was concluded that although greenhouse gas emissions of the Czech Republic are deeply below the Kyoto targets, there are areas for improvements e.g. in case of energy intensities, as well as in case of carbon intensity and carbon productivity, where the Czech Republic reaches worse results than the EU28. Therefore is recommended to decrease greenhouse gas emission and increase gross value added generated by each NACE sector. Both those factors will impact on improvement of energy intensity, carbon productivity as well as greenhouse gas emissions per capita.

Keywords

• greenhouse gas emissions
• Czech Republic
• EU28
• energy intensity
• carbon intensity
• carbon productivity