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The circular economy concept is currently being used in multiple ways. For some academics and organizations circular economy can be identified as a long term goal of achieved green growth while others argue that circular economy is fundamentally different from green growth. In this paper, we explore the conditions allowing green growth to be compatible with the concept of circular economy. Our model explicitly takes into account the possibility of a dematerializing of wealth production and raw material recycling through a green growth framework. We show that the reconciling of green growth with circular economy requires: (i) a fast decrease of the raw material intensity of economy far removed from present and past trajectories, (ii) the absence of a physical limitation to this decrease. This seems to indicate that green growth is essentially different from, and incompatible with the concept of circular economy.