Delinking of Energy Consumption and Economic Growth in the Visegrad Group

Abstract

ABSTRACT:In this study two different decoupling indicators are applied to examine the delinking of the energy consumption from economic growth in the Visegrad Four countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) during the period 1990-2015. In the light of these results conclusions are drawn with regard to the impact of decoupling as well (it means decoupling environmental impacts from economic growth) using the ecological footprint and biocapacity data. This paper pays special attention to the years when the economies are in recession. The resulting estimations of decoupling effects are optimistic, these economies achieved absolute or relative decoupling during a significant part of the period considered. However, the time interval 2009-2013 can be interpreted as a structural break, because in these years the decoupling of the examined variables was not detected and only weak negative, strong negative and expansive negative decoupling could be identified It can be stated that decoupling is not a permanent process and after even one and half decades (such as Poland -1994Poland - -2009) the positive tendency can be reversed. The analysis of the ecological footprint shows that examining the energy consumption, not only the resource decoupling but the impact decoupling can be detected as well.

Spatial Evolution of the Energy and Economic Centers of Gravity

“…This can be explained by the significant share of the tertiary sector (which is much less energy intensive), energy efficiency improvements, stagnation of population numbers (Japan, Germany) and small but balanced growth (Canada, the USA). These countries have already performed absolute or relative decoupling, so they could succeed in breaking the link between environmental pressure and economic driving forces (for more details see Szlávik and Sebestyén Szép [53]).…”

Impacts of Renewable Energy on CO2 Emission: Evidence from the Visegrad Group Countries

“…Moreover, after Brexit 1 the V4 countries became more important in the EU (Brusenbauch Meislova 2019;Göllner 2018). Additionally, between 1995-2015, the V4 experienced rapid economic development, but inversely their energy consumption declined while the energy intensity increased with a considerably constant population, which is considered as decoupling by Szlavik and Sebestyen Szep (2007). The developments stated below are some of the reasons to have growing literature about the V4 group.…”

Remote Sensing Based Assessment of Variation of Spatial Disparities

“…In another approach Jean et al (2016) have used high resolution satellite images captured during the day to make predictions about the spatial distribution of economic well-being in five countries in Africa. In other studies the decoupling between the energy consumption and economic growth was examined (Szlávik and Sebestyén Szép, 2017).…”