EU Energy Policy Blog

To cap global emissions, developed countries must cut back their substantial per capita emission levels while developing countries must prevent their currently small levels from rising. Neither goal is easy to achieve, nor would be politically popular.

The crux of the problem to cap global emissions is the current inequalities in per capita GHG emissions between the rich and the poor (see below).

Current per capita CO2 emissions in selected countries, tons per capita per annum

The figure below shows why the problem is intractable – and politically suicidal unless there is an international agreement that distributes the pain in a fair and equitable basis. The figure shows, in stylized fashion, per capita emissions on the vertical axis and population on the horizontal axis. For sake of contrasting the developed and developing countries, US, Australia and Canada – all carbon-heavy – are combined into one block while OECD Europe and Japan are combined into another block. China and India, the two most populous and rapidly growing economies are shown as representatives of relatively low carbon-footprint developing economies.

Stylized view of current and projected per capita emissions and population in selected countries – not to scale in either dimension

In the absence of a binding agreement, the first block would see their per capita emissions rise slightly by 2030 because they are already quite high and these countries are under pressure to reduce their emissions. Given the fact that their populations are growing only moderately, this block is likely to get a little taller and a little wider by 2030 – but not much in either direction.

The second block represents more mature and less growth regions. Since Europe and Japan have already established targets to reduce their emissions and because their populations are not growing – and projected to shrink in the case of Japan – this block is expected to shrink in height while remaining about the same in width by 2030.

In comparison, the China and India block, each currently with approximately 1.3 billion people, is projected to grow in both dimensions. Consequently this block is likely to grow taller and wider by 2030. Similar arguments can be made for less-developed countries. Ultimately, the size of the shaded area for the developing countries will determine the outcome of any attempt to stabilize global emissions.

F.P. Shioshansi

This post is extracted from EEnergy Informer, December 2008 issue.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Energy Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.