Research Article
Mara Madaleno
Abstract
By using the decoupling index and the decoupling method of Tapio we infer about the decoupling state (considering energy consumption and emissions) of each of the 10 European countries, the highest issuers per GDP unit, between 1995 and 2014, and considering different sectors (transports and electricity). Results are useful not only for understanding what happened until the present moment, but more importantly to serve as a guide towards what is still needed to do in order to prevent carbon emissions increases. Unified energy policies would not be the good recipe for the whole area. Even though there may be political will to construct the common goals and objectives, different policy design for subgroups of member states ought to probably be considered considering that results reveal an heterogeneous behavior reached in terms of strong decoupling until 2014. Results are useful for policy makers, energy producers and consumers as well.