Decomposition and decoupling: A case study of Colombia's energy consumption and economic growth

Nowadays, nobody can deny the relationship between economic growth and sustainability ; however, the tendency to un-match a linear relationship between those two has acquired the name of “decoupling” economy, which means that the consumption of energy not necessarily has to rise at the same rate of gross domestic product, in order to reduce carbon emissions in a country or certain area. Then this document aims to study the Colombian decoupling, analyzing the economic structure and energy consumption between 1975 and 2021, applying the TAPIO model and the logarithmic mean Divisa index (LMDI) using the KAYA identity as a conversion factor (TAPIO + KAYA + LMDI) to analyze the trends per economical sector. Finding that, the Colombian economy has a predominant status of weak decoupling with randomly switches to strong decoupling, positioning it as a sustainable economy; although this condition is environmentally favorable, under a comprehensive public policy, energy consumption by economic sector can be increased to improve economic productivity and achieve better production levels on the sectors of agriculture, mines, and commerce whose energy consumption according to the data is substantially low. • Weak decoupling characterizes the Colombian economy from 1975 to 2021. • The Aggregate, Transport and Industrial sectors are key drivers of energy consumption changes. • Free market contributes to have a decoupling economy due to less pollutants emissions and energy consumption. • Combination of primary and secondary energy sources can affect the results obtained through TAPIO + KAYA + LMDI model.