Figures from the EU statistical service reveal that in the first three months of this year, compared to the same period in 2022, Portugal reduced by 0.11% the emissions of greenhouse gases that weigh on the economy, despite being the community country with the lowest annual decrease among those that registered reductions.

Linking the climate focus with the European economy, Eurostat data point out that, “of the 21 EU countries that reduced their emissions, only six also reduced their GDP - Czechia, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary and Poland, which means that 15 EU countries - Portugal, Croatia, Belgium, Malta, France, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Romania, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Slovenia and Bulgaria - managed to reduce emissions and increase their GDP”.

In this first quarter of 2023, polluting emissions with weight in the economy decreased in almost all of the EU compared to the same period of 2022, except in Ireland (+9.1%), in Latvia (+7.5%), in Slovakia (+1.9%), Denmark (+1.7%), Sweden (+1.6%) and Finland (0.3%), with the largest reductions in greenhouse gases being recorded in Bulgaria (-15.2%), Estonia (-14.7%) and Slovenia (-9.6%).

In the EU as a whole, between January and March of this year, greenhouse gas emissions related to the EU economy totaled 941 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, a decrease of 2.9% compared to the same quarter of 2022.

Eurostat also points out that “this decrease occurred simultaneously with an increase of 1.2% in EU GDP in the first quarter of 2023, compared to the same quarter of 2022”.

In these first three months of the year, the economic sectors responsible for the most polluting emissions were households (24%), manufacturing industry (20%), electricity and gas supply (19%), agriculture (13%), followed by transport and storage (10%).