Decomposition Analysis of energy-related CO2 emissions in the USA and their decoupling from economic growth

• Autor(a) principal: Pereira, João André Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/9747
• topic: Análise à Decomposição das Emissões; Eua; Gee; Índice de Descolagem; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The USA, for the past decade, have been able to reduce their CO2 emissions from energy-use being in 2016 14% lower than they were in 2005. This paper aims to identify the drivers behind the changes in energy related CO2 emissions and the factors that force those changes. To quantify the impact of these factors on the changes in CO2 emissions it is employed the complete decomposition model. This work covers the entire US economy, disaggregated in 4 major sectors (Industry, Transport, Electric and Other sectors) for the period 1997-2016. The results show that among the 4 factors that led to alterations on the emissions levels, the energy efficiency effect and the carbonization index effect were the major contributors to mitigate CO2 emissions. In this paper it is also examined the decoupling index to further understand if the reduction in the emissions was sufficient to decouple economic growth from CO2 emissions. The most common decoupling status observed during the analyzed period was the “Weak Decoupling” status. These results, combined with recent CO2 emissions trends show the importance that the shift in the energy sources from high carbon content fuels, like coal and petroleum, to natural gas that took place in the last decade gave a boost for the American economy to start reducing its CO2 emissions. This reduction was also achieved through improvements in energy efficiency in the economy.