DECOUPLING ECONOMIC GROWTH FROM HIGHER CO2 EMISSIONS

“The trend is irreversible.” Has Romania shattered the link between economic growth and high emissions?

Emissions have plunged 75% since communist times in the birthplace of big oil– but for some the transition has been brutal

Ajit Niranjan The Guardian. 2/11/26

And A Few Thoughts on Evolution beyond “…the once-rigid link between economic growth and carbon emissions.”

Once the frozen fields outside Bucharest have thawed, workers will assemble the largest solar farm in Europe: one million photovoltaic panels backed by batteries to power homes after sunset. But the 760MW project in southern Romania will not hold the title for long. In the north-west, authorities have approved a bigger plant that will boast a capacity of 1GW.

The sun-lit plots of silicon and glass will join a slew of projects that have rendered the Romanian economy unrecognizable from its polluted state when communism ended. They include an onshore windfarm near the Black Sea that for several years was Europe’s biggest, a nuclear power plant by the Danube whose lifetime is being extended by 30 years, and a fast-spreading patchwork of solar panels topping homes and shops across the country.

“The trend is irreversible,” said Liviu Gavrilă, vice-president of the Romanian Wind Energy Association and manager at Enery, which is building the solar farm. “But we need to play it smart.”

Few would consider Romania a climate leader, but on one metric it has found the holy grail of the energy transition. The country has decoupled economic growth from pollution faster than anywhere else in Europe, and perhaps even the world. Its net greenhouse gas emissions intensity fell by 88% between 1990 and 2023, the latest data shows, meaning each dollar’s worth of economic activity heats the planet almost 10 times less than it did before. Emissions have plunged by 75%.

How did Romania shatter the historical link between the economy and the climate? And can its breakneck transformation keep up the pace?

‘History happening’

Under the oppressive reign of Nicolae Ceaușescu, a dictator obsessed with self-sufficiency, the Romanian economy became industrial and polluted. Energy hungry factories sprang up faster than power plants could handle, and Romania turned to low-grade lignite and heavy oil to keep conveyor belts moving. When Ceaușescu was shot and industry privatized, factories closed, mines shut and power plants slashed their output.

At the same time, world leaders began to accept that carbon dioxide was heating the planet to disastrous levels. Aware that emissions needed to fall but mindful that developing countries deserved to grow richer, the signatories of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol hit only industrialized countries with reduction targets. They picked 1990 —the start of the diplomatic climate fight—as a benchmark for measuring progress.

The first drop in Romania’s emissions was “history happening, not active, policy-led decarbonization”, said Ioana-Maria Petrescu, a former finance minister of Romania who founded a climate nonprofit after leaving politics. “But it continued, luckily, because Romania joined the EU.”

Romania’s entry into the European Union in 2007 held polluters to higher standards and forced the closure of unprofitable factories propped up by state support. Its emissions trading system put a price on carbon and its modernization fund brought back cash to clean up the energy system. Meanwhile, workers completed a nuclear power plant in Cernavodă, a town in the south-east of the country, which had been commissioned under Ceaușescu, and the government introduced a green certificate scheme to bankroll renewables.

In the 17 years after the iron curtain fell, the carbon intensity of the power sector— the CO₂ spewed per kWh of electricity generated—fell by 9.2%. In the 17 years following that, it plunged by 52%.

The shift to a service-based economy also led to upheavals in agriculture, where livestock numbers fell and farms modernized or closed. Beleaguered forests got a respite from the high levels of logging under communism and expanded on to abandoned plots. The amount of carbon absorbed by nature increased by 77%, official data suggests.

The changes have resulted in Romania decoupling at one of the fastest rates in Europe, even when measured from the turn of the millennium. But the benefits of its economic boom, which has doubled real GDP since 1990, have not been evenly shared. Entire communities withered after workers lost their jobs in factories and mines. Former coal towns depopulated at alarming rates as young people sought better-paid work abroad.

“It’s good that we reduced greenhouse emissions and it’s good that now we’re relying on different types of industries,” said Petrescu, who runs Pur și Simplu Verde, which works to ensure a just transition in fossil fuel-dependent communities. “But the transition was brutal for a lot of people.”

Low-hanging fruit

If industrial countries could decouple as quickly as Romania—and do so without the social fallout it suffered—the fight to stop climate breakdown may not seem so hopeless. Promising signs have emerged. Dozens of countries have completely decoupled their economies from emissions, even accounting for the pollution in imported goods, and many more have managed to grow richer while emissions climb at a slower rate, which scientists call relative decoupling. An analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) last month found that countries representing 92% of the world’s economy have achieved one of these milestones.

Yet the pace of change is still slow. In 2023, a study of 36 rich countries found 11 had fully broken the link between GDP and CO₂ but none had done so fast enough to comply with their share of the Paris Agreement target of keeping global heating to 1.5C (2.7F). It is also to be seen whether countries have exhausted easy wins from the power sector that may be hard to repeat for sectors such as buildings and transport, said William Lamb, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

“We’ve been chucking coal into ovens and producing power with steam turbines for decades, and actually just switching those things off … is really low-hanging fruit,” said Lamb, who is also a lead author of the soon to be published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. “It’s happening very fast in some countries, and it looks like it will continue happening very fast, but that’s just a chunk of our emissions.”

More recently, the clean energy boom has been marred by the beating that climate policy has taken in much of the rich world. The US has embraced a return to fossil fuels, while the EU has begun to tear up parts of its Green Deal. The ECIU report identified nine countries that had absolutely decoupled in the decade before the Paris climate agreement in 2015 and then reversed progress in the decade after.

Those backtracking include Latvia and Lithuania, two former Soviet republics with economies that—much like Romania—experienced bust in the 90s and boom when they joined the EU in the 2000s. Russia, meanwhile, has steadily increased its emissions since the initial shock after the Soviet Union fell apart.

“Russia doubled down on having a large extractive oil and gas sector, coupled with a highly inefficient use of those resources domestically,” said Lamb. “It’s interesting that Romania—which is on the periphery of Europe and not as wealthy as countries like France, Germany, the UK or Sweden—has still managed to make substantive progress.”

Economic growth no longer linked to carbon emissions in most of the world, study finds

Analysis marking 10 years since Paris climate agreement underscores effectiveness of strong government policies

Jonathan Watts The Guardian 12/11/25

The once-rigid link between economic growth and carbon emissions is breaking across the vast majority of the world, according to a study released ahead of Friday’s 10th anniversary of the Paris climate agreement.

The analysis, which underscores the effectiveness of strong government climate policies, shows this “decoupling” trend has accelerated since 2015 and is becoming particularly pronounced among major emitters in the global south.

Countries representing 92% of the global economy have now decoupled consumption-based carbon emissions and GDP expansion, according to the report by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).

Using the latest Global Carbon Budget data, it finds that decoupling is now the norm across advanced economies, with 46% of global GDP in countries that have expanded their economies while cutting emissions, including Brazil, Colombia and Egypt. The most pronounced decoupling occurred in the UK, Norway and Switzerland.

More important is the spectacular shift in China. The world’s biggest emitter is sharply reducing its economic dependence on coal and other fossil fuels. Between 2015 and 2023, China’s consumption-based emissions rose 24%, less than half the growth of its economy (more than 50%). For the past 18 months, its emissions have plateaued and many analysts believe they may have peaked. If China can turn the corner, the rest of the world should follow.

In total, 21 countries have improved in the past decade. Among them are Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Colombia, Egypt, Italy, Mexico and South Africa – all of which were able to grow economically while reducing emissions.

Twenty-two others have consistently managed to achieve decoupling in the decades before and after 2015. Among them are the US, Japan, Canada and most countries in the European Union.

Donald Trump has tried to move the US in the opposite direction, but his first term as president caused only a brief uptick in emissions. For most of the past two decades US emissions have been falling, according to the authors of the report.

New Zealand, Latvia, Slovenia, Lithuania, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Togo and the host of Cop29, Azerbaijan, had all decoupled before 2015, but their growth has since again become dependent on fossil fuels.

The report underlines how international talks, such as the United Nations Cop gatherings, have helped to drive an energy transition, even if progress has so far failed to keep pace with the threat posed by human-caused global heating.

An earlier analysis by the ECIU shows that the growth of annual CO₂emissions has slowed to 1.2% since 2015, compared with 18.4% in the decade before the Paris agreement.

That agreement, which was signed by nearly 200 countries in 2015, included a commitment to limit heating to well below 2C above preindustrial levels. That sent a strong signal to businesses and governments that they needed to find alternatives to the oil, gas and coal responsible for climate disruption.

As a result, the projection for end-of-century global heating has fallen from 4C to 2.6C. Despite this progress, the authors say more rapid action is needed in the coming decade to stabilize the climate.

With emissions slowing, many analysts hope the peak could finally be in sight, which would usher in the fall that is essential if the world is to keep global heating to between 1.5C and 2C above preindustrial levels by the end of the century.

John Lang, the author of the ECIU report, said: “I’m definitely encouraged. Looking back shows how much progress we have made over the past 10 years. The world is now in a pre-conditioning stage ahead of structural decline. We are approaching a historic point when emissions start to go down. That is super exciting.”

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With the Trump presidency, the United States is obviously moving in the wrong direction again in relation to global warming, and as noted above, there is some backsliding in other nations. At the same time, the economics of renewables has shifted global activity in both new and replacement energy development. Renewables for the most part are simply less expensive both to install and to operate than fossil fuel plants. For nations that are not confined by fossil fuel ideology like the United States, or dependence on fossil fuel income like Russia, money rules.

For the present and the next several decades, the decoupling of economic growth from carbon dioxide emissions is the best hope for the limitation of global warming. This is already transpiring, so the political agenda must be to maximize decoupling. This agenda offers a very attractive ideological synthesis, a common policy ground, in that both mental/modernist consciousness folks and affiliative/postmodern consciousness folks can rally to this cause. Save money, save the planet.

Later in this century there will be a need for integral/authentic consciousness leaders to explain that infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet, although the coming reduction in total population in most societies will open up the ever more realistic possibility for the ongoing enhancement of life’s quality for all humans.

As I have noted in a previous post, in not so many years the reduced birth rates all over the planet, except for sub-Saharan Africa, will result in the ongoing reduction of the population in every nation outside of sub-Saharan Africa.

“Many current governments are trying to bribe women to give birth to more children. The mostly men who lead these governments perceive a larger population as an engine both for more industrial production and greater military power. Both perceptions are antiquated, given the technological innovations of recent decades. The military will be increasingly technological, needing fewer people to operate. Industrial production has already moved toward roboticization and will continue to do so with the advent of AI. Nations with increasingly smaller populations, up to a point of critical mass, will be healthier and stronger in the coming decades.

“The pro-natalists are stuck in the 20^th century: authoritarians like Viktor Orban, dictators like Putin and Xi, and wannabe authoritarians like J. D. Vance and Elon Musk. Recently Xi has increased the rewards on offer for childbirth, including cash, tax credits, and housing loans. Yet so far none of the programs instituted by him or other leaders to bribe women to have more children has succeeded.

“The coming reduction in overall population will be an unmitigated benefit both for every human society and for all life forms on the planet. Fewer people mean less consumption, less waste, yet a greater possibility of material well-being for all. Fewer births mean a much greater percentage of families that have only one or two children. This creates the opportunity for parents to focus intently on each child’s health and education. A smaller human population also allows for more habitat for all life forms, animals and plants.

“The key political/cultural challenge in this mid-century will be managing the transition from the current population levels to the new reality of fewer people, balancing the obligation to respond to the needs of the current aging populace while also restructuring societies to prepare for fewer individuals in the next two generations. Japan will lead the way in engaging with this challenge. According to Statista, the Japanese population in 2024 is about 124 million. Projected by 2060, 93 million. By 2100, 60 million. Consider the opportunities that this unforced reduction in population will provide to Japanese society, a nation that in 2024 imports 60% of its food.

“Lower TFR is the best news humans have had in recent decades. We absolutely need to take advantage of the opportunities it offers, particularly because this reduction is simply the result of millions of free personal choices, even in the authoritarian nations. All this potential though is dependent on nations’ capacities to manage the transition well over the coming decades: to care for elders with dignity and respect even as the workforce declines in number, although not necessarily in productivity, and to plan effectively for a smaller population in the coming decades.”

The greatest challenge in elder care will manifest in “developed” nations between 2030 and 2070. For the most part these nations have the resources needed to provide respectful care for the aged, if only these resources were directed to this purpose. For example, in 2025 the United States spent $1.61 trillion on Social Security—income for retired persons—with income to this program of $1.43 trillion. Total Medicare—health care insurance for people over 65—spending in 2023 was $848 billion. Medicare revenue in 2023 was $498 billion.

$180 billion plus $350 billion equals a $530 billion difference between expenditure and income. Seems like a lot. Yet the United States also devoted more than a trillion dollars to “defense” and the Department of War in FY 2025. The United States also has the most expensive, most wasteful system of medical care of any nation, and the larger deficit resides in the health care domain.

Key 2023-2024 Per Capita Healthcare Spending (USD)

· United States: $13,432 (2023)

· Switzerland: $9,688 (2023)

· Germany: $8,441 (2023)

· Austria: $7,811 (2023)

· Netherlands: $7,737 (2023)

· Canada: $7,013 (2023)

· Australia: $6,931 (2023)

· France: $7,136 (2023)

· United Kingdom: $6,023 (2023)

“Developed” nations have the resources to pay for the transition to smaller populations if these funds can be redirected from “defense” to the care of the elderly. In this moment as Trump destabilizes the global order and most “developed” nations are actually racing to spend more on “defense,” this may feel fanciful. But the orientations of the present are likely to prove transitory. Trump is busy destroying both his own power and the historic power of the 20^th century American empire. Putin is entangled in a war he cannot seem to win, a war that both weakens Russia every day and reveals the weakness of Russia. I could of course be wrong, but it seems to me that both Trump and Putin are blinded by their obsessive attachment to their own ideology, which is already failing and which will lead to their diminution and eventual removal from power.

Smaller populations that recognize the limits to growth will generate fewer carbon emissions. China’s population growth has already stopped. With the borders closed, population growth in the United States will stop as well, since the TFR in the USA is only 1.63, and this is also falling, as highlighted in the NY Times just yesterday. There is a certain irony in the likelihood that the current populist call to limit or end the immigration of “foreigners” will lead to a reduced population in every nation that adopts these policies, because none of these nations has a TFR above the replacement rate.