From a sustainability perspective, the aim is to maintain economic growth in such a way that the environmental impacts do not increase to the same extent as economic growth, and preferably decline.

By calculating emission intensity as emissions per produced amount of goods or services over time, we can ascertain whether the production has become more or less emission-intensive over time.

A commonly used variable for production is the value of the National Accounts’ variable “output”, which in fixed prices represents a volume measure.