ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we analyze the economies of the five most GHG emitting countries in 2011, according to the data from the World Bank. These are China, the United States, India, Russia and Japan. These countries signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in December of 2015 and participated in the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) in which they established their goals for GHG emissions reduction called Intended National Determined Contributions (INDC).
The purpose of studying these five countries has concentrated on analyzing the trends that their GHG emissions will follow from 2011 to 2030. In order to accomplish this objective, we have used some techniques derived from structural analysis or input-output analysis. These IO techniques allowed us to determine which sectors of the five economies can be considered key sectors. Also, we could establish through these techniques what sectors were the highest GHG emitting ones in each of the economies under study.
We built an Environmental Input-Output model, with the purpose of forecasting GHG emissions of each of the five economies under two alternative scenarios. One of the scenarios is the so-called business as usual (BAU), which means doing nothing to reduce GHG emissions. The other scenario utilized a different Input-Output Matrix (IOM) – one which was modified to incorporate a technological change in four selected sectors. That is, we simulate a technical change in the selected five economies.
The results were that three countries, out of the five studied, the United States, Russia and Japan established clear and feasible goals for 2030, and their target trends suggest that they will be applying mitigation policies that consist of technological changes in sectors that are key or high emitting sectors, or both, such as the ones we chose for the study. China’s committed goals for reducing GHG by 2030 are very strong relative to its current emissions levels, as compared to the other four countries. Our simulated forecasting of GHG emissions reduction through technical change is above the level this country is assumed to reach. India is not committed to reduce the absolute GHG emissions level, so in order to actually reduce this level of emissions for 2030, it seems clear that they should apply a technological change.
