The 'carbon cost' of economic growth: New figures show Asia's high CO2 intensity

In 2021, ThomasLloyd introduced the concept of the “Carbon Cost of GDP”; the amount of CO2 which is emitted for every trillion dollars of Gross Domestic Product.

This allowed us to make meaningful comparisons across countries and to rank their emissions' intensity with respect to economic output rather than to population which - in our view - gives a flawed picture of the true situation in China and India. Our research showed that in 2019, while China and the United States were the largest emitters of CO2 in absolute terms - with 10.2 and 5.3 million tons respectively - the figures looked very different when calculated per unit of GDP. Using data from the International Monetary Fund and Global Carbon Atlas, figures show China emitted almost three...