Emissions Seem to Decrease and This Brings Some Hope.

France has just announced a 4.8% reduction in emissions for 2023. We look at this event and comment on both advanced and developing economies emissions, and their differences.

France announces some good news, but we need more efforts.

In 2023, France achieved a 4.8% reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions compared to 2022, marking a significant achievement as stated by Christophe Béchu, the Minister of Ecological Transition. The news was published by France 24 and other media outlets. Further information from Citepa is available in a press kit here. This reduction mirrored the decrease seen over the 2012-2017 period, with the country's activities (excluding the carbon footprint of imports) generating 385 million tons of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e), which is lower than the emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. For comparison, Germany's emissions decreased by 9.8% to 673 MtCO2e in 2023.

Notably, this reduction spanned across all sectors, with a significant contribution from the energy sector, which saw a 14% reduction. This was largely due to an increase in decarbonized electricity production, especially from nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, and solar sources. The industry also saw an 8% decline in emissions, primarily due to lower production levels. The building and household sectors also recorded positive outcomes, attributed to energy-saving behaviors, energy renovation projects amidst rising energy prices, and milder temperatures in January and December that reduced heating demand. However, the transport sector remains a concern, particularly aviation, where domestic and international flight emissions significantly increased, surpassing pre-COVID levels.

While these figures indicate progress towards France's national low-carbon strategy goals, they only represent gross emissions, not accounting for carbon absorption by natural sinks, which falls short of projections. The reduction has been critiqued by environmental NGOs as being largely due to current economic conditions, such as energy price hikes leading to involuntary conservation efforts, rather than structural changes. There are calls for more substantial public policies to make these emission reductions sustainable, including removing barriers to renewable energy development, promoting small electric vehicles, and reforming the aviation sector's taxation.

With France currently at a 29% reduction in emissions from 1990 levels, the country needs to continue this trend to meet the European Union's goal of a 55% reduction by 2030, underscoring the importance of not becoming complacent in climate efforts.

What is the situation around the world? Do we have signs for hope?

The global situation presents a contrast, yet we can still notice some interesting trends. Indeed, relying on the great source of information that Our World In Data contains, and as represented on the map below, we can see that France and Germany's improvement in emissions was already noticeable in 2022. However, exploring the time evolution of this map (available here) reveals that this was not the case for every years in the past. We also see that some developing economies are still increasing quickly their level of emissions. Nevertheless, more countries are passing their peak emissions going down a reduction trend.

When looking at the trajectories of emissions from different regions of the world, what appears more clearly is that the European continent is the one having experienced the most reductions of CO2 emissions, since several decades. The USA is also on a trajectory of reductions of emissions. As for other regions, especially developing economies, the level of emissions is growing steeply and now accounts for the largest share of the world's emissions. China's emissions are obviously the largest, though its population is also very large, and we can see that India alone, with a comparable population, stays at a much lower level of emissions so far. To evaluate other countries, you can access this graph here.

When looking for an explanation about these trends, it is not difficult to understand that the main reason is that developing countries still attempt to reach the same level of wealth as rich economies. This is particularly visible through the GDP per capita, in the scatter plot below. What appears at first sight in this plot is that the more wealthy a country becomes, the more emissions it will generate to reach this level of wealth. This could make us think that the world is doomed, as mechanically the acceptation that countries have the right to develop will inevitably lead to more and more emissions. But then, how can we explain that European countries emissions tend to go down?

The answer to this question is complex, and one should properly address domestic emissions and exported emissions of countries. What still appears visible in this plot is that some countries are better at generating revenue while limiting their emissions. Indeed, countries as close as possible to the bottom right corner are the most efficient at producing wealth while not generating emissions. We see that European countries are the closest, and that the large dispersion of countries orthogonal to this upward curve (in log scale) reveals a large difference in revenue-generating efficiency per ton of CO2 emitted. A good example of this is brought by the renewables, which allow the production of energy and the use of electricity-consuming machines and vehicles, without the generation of operational emissions.

The graph above shows the trajectories of several countries since 1990 (you can test other countries here). What we see is twofold. The developed countries have historically reached a location close to the top-right corner and are now moving down-right, meaning they are getting more wealthy while reducing their emissions at the same time. As for the developing economies, they follow the trajectory that rich countries followed some decades before, and catching up quickly. What seems to be a challenge is to avoid having a steep slope, since the most profitable trajectory is an horizontal one from a point of low carbon emissions, or a downward trend towards higher GDP per capita (like for European countries). The reason why countries are not having such a flat trajectory to the right yet is that economic development still heavily relies on fossil fuels, but one must hope that innovations brought by some countries will inspire developing countries to find a better path to prosperity.

Conclusion

We have addressed complex topics at the intersection between countries' contribution to global emissions, population growth, and economic development. Every country has its own unique characteristics and it would be inappropriate to draw conclusions too simply. Nevertheless, we have seen that Europe is making good progress in reducing its carbon emissions, and this is good news that we should rejoice about. Additionally, we can sincerely hope that developing countries, such as India, will get inspired by Europe's efforts and takes a shorter route in its economic development, moving towards renewable energies and creating wealth which will not rely on carbon emissions. Overall, every country will have to make great efforts to reduce global emissions and limit the impacts of climate change.