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Is green growth possible? J. Hickel

23 important questions on Is green growth possible? J. Hickel

What is green growth?

The green growth theory says that continuous economic growth is compatible with our planet’s ecology, as technological change and substitution will allow us to absolutely decouple GDP growth from resource use and carbon emissions.

When did green growth begin and why?

At the Rio conference in 2012, because of the serious warnings about climate change and ecological breakdown.

Which 3 proponents (voorstanders) of green growth are there at the international level?

  • The OECD
  • United Nations environmnet program (UNEP)
  • World bank
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What is the promise of green growth?

That technological change and substitution will improve the ecological efficiency of the economy, and that governments can speed this process with the right regulations and incentives (drijfveren).

What is the conventional metric for measuring an economy’s resource use?

Domestic material cosumption (DMC), which is the total weight of raw materials (biomass, minerals metals and fossil fuels) extracted from the demostic territory, plus all physical imports minus physical exports).

What indicates the resource efficiency of an economy?

GDP diveded by DMC

What is absolute decoupling?

Growing GDP while reducing DMC

Why is DMC a problematic indicator?

Because it does not include the material impact involved in the production and transport of imported goods. - inportant because globalised countries have outsourced their production to poorer countries, shifting the production off their balance sheet.

How can countries achieve relative decoupling and still have a big material foodprint? (recoupling)

Because they outsource their production to poorer countries

What is the material foodprint?

The ‘total’ resource impact of consumption including the outsourced production.

What is the global historical trend of relative decoupling?

It shows relative decoupling but no evidence of absolute decoupling, and 21th century trends show worse efficiency, with re-coupling occuring.

What are the future projectories for decoupling?

  • One argument is that resource intensity will diminish as economies shift from manufacturing to services, however this is not true because services require significant amounts of materials + income aquired from selling services is used to purchase resource intensive goods.
  • Another argument is that technological innovations and government policy might drive decoupling in the future

Why will improving resource efficiency not be enough?

Because of the rebound effect - more efficiency - reduce cost of a good/service - increased demand.

What could be a good step toward green growth?

A circulair economy.

What is the argument pro green growth regarding to the studies?

The studies are based on global numbers, we need to look at what high-income nations might be able to achieve, given their greater capacity for technological development.

Why does green growth not work on high-income nations?

Conclusion: while absolute decoupling is achieved in the short term, in the longer term, material extraction rises by 2.16% per year, nearly matching the rate of GDP growth.

What happens when the physical limits of resouce use are being reached?

The continued GDP growth drives resource use back up, decoupling of GDP growth from resource use, whether relative or absolute, is at best temporary. Permanent decoupling (relative or absolute) is impossible for essential, non-substitutable resources because the efficiency gains are ultimately governed by physical limits. Growth in GDP ultimately cannot plausible be decoupled form growth in material and energy use, demonstating categorically that GDP growth cannot be sustained indefinitly. It is therefore mileading to develop growth-oriented policy around the expectation that decoupling is possible.

What is the challenge for green growth regarding carbon emissions?

For the green growth theory, the question is not only wheather we can achieve absolute decoupling and reduce emissions, but wheather we can reduce emissions fast enough to stay within the carbon budget for 1.5 - 2 degrees, as per the Paris agreement, while still continuing economic growth.

Tell something about the IPPC scenarios in regard to BECCS

The IPCC 5th report includes 116 mitigation scenarios that are representative with RCP 2.6 (<2 degrees). All of these are green growth scenarios that enable GDP to grow. Only 6 of the 116 scenarios exclude BECCS.


The RCP scenarios rely on BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) to the point of achieving negative emissions. BECCS relies on growing large tree plantations, harvesting the biomass, burning it for energy, capturing CO2 undergound. (negative emission technologies).

Why is BECCS controversial?

there is no evidence of its feasibility, while the IPCC has included it in their RCP scenarios. When it doesn’t work, the IPCC has taken of pressure to conventional mitigation pathways (i.e. lowering emmissions). - politicians will postpone the need for rapid emission reduction.

What are the concerns regarding BECCS?

  • The viability of power generation with CCS has never been proven to be economically viable/scalable: it would require the construction of 15000 facilities.
  • The scale of biomass assumed by the AR5 scenarios would require plantations covering two to 3 times the size of India (land availability issues/competition with food production/biodiversity loss)
  • The necessary storage capacity may not exist.

What are alternative pathways for meeting the Paris agreement targets without relying on widespread use of negative emissions technologies?

  • Global population peaks at 8.4 billion in 2050 and declines to 6.9 billion by 2100
  • Meat consumption declines 80% by 2050
  • All new cars and airplanes are efficient from 2050
  • The world shift to most efficient technologies for steel and cement production

Why won’t the theoretical green growth model work in practice?

  • Technological development causes economic growth and growth in consumption. The more efficiently an economy uses resources, the more it grows, and the more resources it ends up consuming.
  • The total labour or energy that has gone into the production of a good, cannot be measured, and therefore the price of a good/service can’t be measured. We therefore don’t have a theroy of value that allows us to determine wheater vaue can be absolutely decoupled from throughput.

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Readings Government of Global Sustainability

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