It is by working on an update of his book “Fossil Carbon, Living Carbon” that the economist Christian de Perthuis had to observe the long series of CO2 emissions and GDP again. Not for fun, but to calculate the energy footprint of the wealth created, that is to say the quantity of primary energy (natural resources) necessary to produce the goods and services consumed. Good news, it takes on average half as much primary energy to produce a unit of GDP in 2024 as in 1980 (see graph). How to explain this good development? “An important characteristic seems to me to be the relative decorrelation between the economic growth regime and the fossil carbon emissions observed since the oil shocks of the 1970s, writes the economist on his blog. This decorrelation is explained by the fact that the price of energy stopped falling relative to all other prices from 1975. This provided an incentive to save energy. This is our price effect. The observed trend indeed shows how the evolution of relative prices impacts the structure of consumption in the medium and long term.
Swiss
