Kick the Habit: A UN Guide to Climate Neutrality

Greenhouse gas intensity of national economies The national greenhouse gas intensity measures the quantity of GHG emissions in relation to the economic output of a country and is independent of the absolute quantity of GHG emitted. Other ways to represent GHG emissions are emissions per capita or in total per country. In both cases the picture changes completely. Countries with high absolute emissions may have relatively low intensities and vice versa, as with growing economic productivity efficiency tends to increase, and economic activities shift from industrial to the service sector. On the other hand, countries with high intensity may well have very low per capita emissions. See pages 22 and 48 for alternative rankings of emitters.

* The international dollar takes into

Tonnes of carbon per Intl.$* 1 million

account the purchasing

no data

more than 2000 from 1000 to 2000 from 200 to 2000 from 100 to 200

power parities of countries and the average prices of commodities.

Source: World Resources Institute CAIT Database, 2007 (data for 2000); Wikipédia.

less than 100

COUNTRIES

As with everyone else, the bottom line for countries is to save money, and one way of doing that is by saving energy. An example is China, which has announced that it will invest 1.5 trillion yuan (US$193 thousand million) by making existing buildings more energy efficient by 2020 so as to save mil- lions of tonnes of coal. Warning that wasted energy was slowing economic growth, the Vice-Minister of Construction, Qiu Baoxing, said 350 million tonnes of coal could be saved in 15 years if existing buildings were renovated to make them more efficient, and if new buildings met green standards. From 1980 to 2006 China’s energy consumption increased by 5.6 per cent an- nually, boosting the 9.8 per cent annual growth in its economy. But energy con- sumption for every 10 000 yuan of GDP dropped from 3.39 tonnes of standard coal in 1980 to 1.21 tonnes in 2006, an annual energy-saving rate 3.9 per cent.

KICK THE HABIT THE CYCLE – REDUCE

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