Confronting the Kaya identity with investment and capital stocks

The author argues that while scaling relations like the IPAT equation and Kaya identity are useful for gauging the scale of changes needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they fail to account for existing capital legacies and the necessity of new investment during large-scale economic shifts. To address this, the paper introduces an extended Kaya identity formulated as a sum of terms, designed to maintain the capacity for rapid exploration of low-carbon pathways while capturing capital-related factors.

• Standard scaling relations, including the IPAT equation and the Kaya identity, are effective for quickly estimating the demographic, technological, and economic changes needed to lower environmental pressures, specifically greenhouse gas emissions.
• The IPAT and Kaya identities are insufficient for analyzing large-scale transitions to low-carbon economies because they do not account for the legacy of existing capital or the requirement for new investment.
• The paper introduces an extended Kaya identity structured as a sum of terms rather than a simple scaling relation, which enables the rapid analysis of various paths toward a low-carbon economy while including investment and capital stocks.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2012). Confronting the Kaya identity with investment and capital stocks. https://www.sei.org/publications/confronting-the-kaya-identity-with-investment-and-capital-stocks/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Confronting the Kaya identity with investment and capital stocks. 2012. https://www.sei.org/publications/confronting-the-kaya-identity-with-investment-and-capital-stocks/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Confronting the Kaya identity with investment and capital stocks |date=10 January 2012 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/confronting-the-kaya-identity-with-investment-and-capital-stocks/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2012confronting, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Confronting the Kaya identity with investment and capital stocks}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2012}, month = jan, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/confronting-the-kaya-identity-with-investment-and-capital-stocks/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }