Decoupling Economic Growth from Emissions in Poland on the Background of EU Countries

Nowadays studying CO₂ emissions play a focal role in the current debate on environment protection and sustainable development. CO₂ has been recognized by most scientists as a major source of global warming through its greenhouse effects. Another reason is that CO₂ emissions are directly related to the use of energy, which is an essential factor in the world economy, both for production and consumption. Access to relatively cheap electricity determines economic competitiveness on the market. Therefore, the relationship between CO₂ emissions and economic growth has important implications for environmental and economic policies. The main aim of the article is researching the dependencies between emissions and economic growth. The phenomenon of decoupling the economic growth from the emission level in European Union countries has a very complex nature. As a test sample, eight largest electricity producers in the European Union were presented, responsible for 75% of CO₂ emissions in the entire European Union. As a measure of economic growth, the widely used Gross Domestic Product per capita was adopted; which is currently heavily criticized due to the fact that its average value per capita of the country does not really show real income due to significant differentiation of income levels among various social groups. The examination of Pearson correlation coefficient between emissions and economic growth for the several European Union countries such as: Germany, UK, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Netherlands confirmed that developed countries would been able to achieve economic growth and at the same time decrease of emissivity was achieved.