GHG: Doing More Than Your Neighbour

There was a discussion earlier on this blog as to which countries are doing better than others at reducing GHG emissions, and why. There are various possible ways to do the analysis when trying to determine whether differences are because of this or that policy or this or that economic structure. But when you look at the changes in GHG emissions from the base year for different countries (see chart from the unfccc.int web site, click for a closer view) it is clear that one factor predominates: geography.

Starting from the bottom of the chart, it is pretty obvious that a country's stay behind the iron curtain is a good predictor of major reductions. Several countries have even negotiated for base years earlier than 1990, which makes the change even bigger. At the top of the chart, being in southern Europe seems to be a good predictor for major increases. Various English-speaking countries are also well represented up there. Being Scandinavian also places the country above average, well that one is a surprise to me, I thought the Scandinavians were doing well. Some of them are more difficult to classify. Germany is partly northern and partly eastern. France is partly southern. How do you judge whether the country has developed a national will to change its ways or whether it is being dragged along up or down by the regional economy and the "maturity" of its own economic system?

One way I find useful is to see whether a country is outperforming the countries it borders with. With that unrigorous analytical tool in mind, some interesting insight comes out, and some countries stand out. Germany, for instance, inherited the highly polluting East German economy in 1990, and its emissions went down, but much less than its eastern fellow Soviet bloc neighbours, while its western neighbours kept their emissions relatively steady. So, good for Germany but it's not any better than the average of its neighbours.

The UK definitely stands out as one that does much better than all its neighbours. It cut its emissions significantly, while Ireland is through the roof, the Benelux countries are almost holding the line and France is down but not as much. France is actually outperforming all its neighbours except for the UK and Germany. France is caught between extremes. It has an eastern hybrid to the right, southern economies below (Spain and Portugal are the worst performers and Italy's emissions are also growing), the British GHG-cutting champion across the channel and small economies holding the line to the east.

Italy is a southern country, but all of its neighbours including Slovenia and Croatia are doing significantly better than it, except for Austria. What's with Austria? It also stands out as a country doing much worse than all its neighbours. Australia and New Zealand are difficult to compare to anything. On the surface, they are both doing badly, but to be fair Australia is not a signatory and its Kyoto target is 10% above 1990 level, while New Zealand's is 0%, so New Zealand is doing much worse.

Canada. Sigh. Worse than the US. Worse than just about every comparable country. It ratified the Protocol. It's a little better than the graph says, there was an error in that year's data, but it's still pretty bad.

The winners, relative to their neighbours: the UK, Sweden, France. The losers: Austria, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Spain, and Italy.

Tags: Greenhouse Gas UK Kyoto Protocol

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