Economic Transition Monitor

This is the first in what will be a regular monitoring of the path to net-zero. The first edition focuses on the C20 – the 20 largest CO2 emitter countries. These countries accounted for 80% of global CO2 emissions in 2020. Now that COP-26 is behind us, Invesco examines the net-zero targets set by each country (though not all of them have yet established a target). To analyse the likely success in meeting those targets, they show recent trends in emissions, emissions per capita and the CO2 intensity of economic activity (net-zero requires the latter two metrics to fall to zero). They also make a distinction between production-based and consumption-based emissions (the former is the way that data is commonly presented but it is unfair to countries that are sources of goods and raw materials that are consumed in other countries).