A study by the World Resources Institute found that since the start of the 21st century, 21 countries, including the U.S., Germany, France, UK, Ukraine, Spain and others, have already fully decoupled their economic growth from carbon emissions. Over the 14-year period, the aggregate annual CO2 reduction for these 21 countries amounted to slightly more than 1 billion metric tons.
More than 90 percent of the countries that decoupled GDP and GHG emissions between 2000 and 2014 reduced the industrial sector share of their economies. For these countries, the average change in the industry share of GDP was a 3 percent reduction over the period, with an average CO2 reduction of 15 percent. However, there are also concerns that deindustrialization of some of the above economies is largely achieved by moving carbon intensive industries to other countries, such as China. Read more at http://www.wri.org/
