These countries are growing their economies and lowering emissions at the same time

The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently reported that global GDP has grown the past two years even as greenhouse gas emissions have fallen.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide have stabilized at around 32.1 billion metric tons since 2013, the IEA said. The group intends to examine the drivers of declining emissions more closely in a future report, but said its preliminary data suggests that renewable energy played a key role — as much as 90 percent of all new electricity generation capacity installed worldwide in 2015 used clean energy technologies.

Meanwhile, the global economy grew by more than three percent in both 2014 and 2015. The IEA has been tracking global emissions for the past four decades, and said that there have only been four periods in which emissions stayed flat or declined, three of which — the early 1980s, 1992, and 2009 — were caused by slumps in the global economy. But this time, emissions dropped while the economy was expanding.

Researchers at the World Resources Institute (WRI) found that 21 countries have managed to decouple GDP growth from energy production-related CO2 emissions between 2000 and 2014.

“The United States is the largest country to experience multiple consecutive years in which economic growth has been ‘decoupled’ from growth in carbon dioxide emissions,” WRI’s Nate Aden wrote in a blog post. “From 2010 to 2012, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions declined by 6 percent (from 5.58 to 5.23 billion metric tons), while GDP grew by 4 percent (from $14.8 to $15.4 trillion).”

Other countries that have achieved GDP growth that didn’t result in more emissions include the UK, which, over the 14-year period, saw energy-related CO2 emissions drop from 591 to 470 million metric tons as its GDP grew by more than half a trillion dollars.

But not all of the 21 countries reduced emissions by switching to renewable energy. “Sweden, for example, implemented ambitious policies including carbon taxes that supported its decoupling,” Aden wrote.

“As countries embark on the transition to a new climate economy, there’s a debate about whether growth can drive, or even coexist with, climate stabilization,” he added.

“The debates on growth and resources are complex, fractious and centuries old, and while they won’t be resolved in the immediate future, recent developments show that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions stayed flat in 2014 and 2015 while GDP continued to grow.”