To keep global heating and other negative consequences of socioeconomic activities within manageable boundaries, industrialized countries must undergo substantial decarbonization, requiring the exploitation of synergies with other environmental endeavors. Improving resource efficiency—that is, reducing the resources required to generate a unit of economic output—is a prominent goal pursued across levels of scale. How does resource efficiency relate to decarbonization? Do economies decrease their emissions as they become more efficient? We examine this relationship for Austria from 2000 to 2015 by conducting an index decomposition analysis at the sectoral level by using consumption‐based indicators from the multi‐regional input–output model Exiobase. Our analysis shows that for Austria, the currently popular pursuit of material efficiency appears to run the risk of coinciding with higher emissions, suggesting that the opportunities to achieve both decarbonization and dematerialization are limited. The Austrian service sectors could contribute to a reduction of the CO₂ footprint via material efficiency improvements, but strong economic growth foils this possibility coming to fruition. The Austrian economy would do well to either curb demand for goods and services driving global CO₂ emissions or to produce imported goods and services domestically in an environmentally more benign manner.

中文翻译：

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材料效率改进是否适得其反？：通过指数分解分析得出的见解，涉及奥地利的CO2排放量与材料使用之间的联系

为了将全球供暖和社会经济活动的其他负面影响保持在可控范围内，工业化国家必须进行实质性的脱碳，这要求与其他环境努力产生协同作用。提高资源效率（即减少生成单位经济产出所需的资源）是跨规模追求的一个重要目标。资源效率与脱碳有何关系？经济体在提高效率时会减少排放吗？通过使用来自多区域投入产出模型Exiobase的基于消耗的指标，在​​部门一级进行指数分解分析，我们研究了奥地利在2000年至2015年之间的这种关系。我们的分析表明，对于奥地利，当前对材料效率的普遍追求似乎冒着与更高排放量相吻合的风险，这表明实现脱碳和脱物质化的机会是有限的。奥地利服务业可能有助于降低CO通过提高材料效率提高了_2个占地面积，但强劲的经济增长阻止了这种可能性的实现。奥地利的经济状况对于抑制驱动全球CO ₂排放的商品和服务的需求，或者以对环境更加温和的方式在国内生产进口商品和服务，都将是一个很好的选择。