Driving forces and decoupling indicators for carbon emissions from the industrial sector in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia

North Africa currently accounts for about 40% of Africa’s total CO2 emissions, and the industrial sector is one of the energy-intensive sectors in the region. To this end, special attention should be paid to this region if the African continent’s GHG mitigation targets are to be achieved. An extended decomposition approach was combined with the Tapio method to explore the decoupling of CO2 emissions from industrial growth in North African countries over the period of 1990–2016. The effects of five factors were assessed in the decoupling and the study took into account all fossil fuels used in the industrial sector of this region. Unlike Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, this study did not consider Libya because of the unavailability of data. Meanwhile, the results showed that: (i) low decoupling was achieved in Tunisia, compared with Morocco and Egypt, where significant decoupling occurred significantly over the study period. (ii) Due to the slowdown in industrial growth, the decoupling analysis did not show satisfactory results in the case of Algeria. (iii) Scale effects contributed to promoting decoupling only in Algeria, while the energy intensity effect played a negative role in decoupling only in Tunisia. (iv) The energy structure effect played an important role in decoupling in Tunisia and Egypt, while the economic structural effect favored decoupling in Tunisia and Morocco alone. An energy policy conducive to the use of more renewable energy is needed to promote decoupling in North African countries.