Integrating Economic and Climate Data Will Strengthen Climate Policy
IMF Blog, July 9, 2024
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: James Tebrake, Francien Berry, Darja Milic
- Published: July 9, 2024
Role of data and initiative overview
- Data forms the foundation for informed decision-making, guiding policy development, implementation, and monitoring.
- The Group of Twenty is stepping up efforts through the third phase of the Data Gaps Initiative to better integrate climate data with macroeconomic statistics.
- Objective: supply more granular data to better understand the transition towards a lower carbon economy and improve alignment of economic policies with sustainable goals.
- The Chart of the Week highlights greenhouse gas emission intensities (emission levels relative to industry output) as a key metric to show which industries produce more pollutants per dollar of output.
Key findings from available data
- Notable reductions in emission intensities within agricultural and industrial sectors (the industrial sector encompasses electricity, mining, and water industries).
- Those sectors together account for over 75 percent of all G20 emissions and are among the most emission intensive.
- Declines in emission intensities suggest that lower carbon sources of energy, cleaner technologies, and energy efficiency improvements are contributing to emissions reductions.
- Despite sectoral improvements, the overall pace is insufficient to decouple economic growth from emissions in time to meet climate goals.
Climate targets and implications
- The 2023 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report indicates that global greenhouse gas emissions would need to decline by at least 43 percent by 2030 compared to 2019 levels to keep global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius.
- Achieving this reduction in emissions while maintaining economic growth would drive emission intensities towards zero—where they ultimately need to rest.
Data gaps and measurement challenges
- Significant and persistent data gaps remain despite progress: most G20 economies still do not regularly produce these statistics or do so without the necessary sectoral detail.
- Lack of robust data coverage hampers effective management and decision-making: “You can't manage what you don't measure.”
- Greenhouse gas emissions from productive activities are only one part of a country’s carbon footprint; a full understanding requires accounting for emissions embodied in trade and activities located outside a country’s borders.
- One goal of the initiative is to expand carbon footprints for the G20 that reflect each country's emissions, irrespective of where the emissions physically occur.
Ongoing work and policy relevance
- Third-phase efforts to standardize and expand air emission accounts are intended to improve measurement and management of environmental impact, not merely procedural adjustments.
- As work progresses, improved data will better inform border adjustment considerations and help align economic policies with sustainable goals.
- Data produced in this area can be accessed from countries’ own dissemination platforms and from the IMF’s Climate Change Indicators Dashboard.
Source: James Tebrake, Francien Berry, Darja Milic — July 9, 2024, “Integrating Economic and Climate Data Will Strengthen Climate Policy” (Chart of the Week).
Content in this bundle
- third-phase-of-the-data-gaps-initiaitve-first-progress-report