2025
Over the past five decades, the world’s urban population has doubled, with nearly half of humanity now living in cities and towns. Understanding how this rapid urbanisation affects greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollutant emissions is essential for effective climate action.
This dataset presents global GHG emissions for over 10.000 cities in the world, combining information from the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) and the Global Human Settlements Layer (GHSL) developed within the GEO Human Planet Initiative. By integrating high-resolution spatial data (1 km × 1 km) with settlement the dataset enables a systematic analysis of emission patterns across world regions and income groups over the past five decades.
The data are produced by downscaling national EDGAR emissions using advanced geospatial proxies derived from GHSL, population distribution, and sectoral activity data. This approach allows for a detailed mapping of where emissions occur, capturing both industrial point sources and residential emissions influenced by population density and climatic conditions.
Detailed information on the spatial proxies used in EDGAR and the downscaling methodology can be found in several scientific publications (Janssens-Maenhout et al., 2019; Crippa et al., 2021; Crippa et al., 2024).
Residential and road transport proxies were updated in June 2026 (Crippa et al., 2026.) Specifically, to capture subnational variability in residential energy use, we apply fuel-specific weighting factors to the population- and Heating Degree Days (HDD)-based spatial proxies. For road transport, the updated proxies capture the heterogeneous distribution of transport activity across road networks, improving the spatial representation of road transport emissions at the global scale.
| Sectors | IPCC 2006 |
|---|---|
| Power Industry - Power and heat generation plants (public & autoproducers) | 1A1a |
| Industry - Combustion for industrial manufacturing, industrial process emissions, fuel exploitation | 1A1b+ 1A1c+1A2+1B+2+5 |
| Buildings - Small scale non-industrial stationary combustion | 1A4+1A5 |
| Transport - Mobile combustion (road & rail & ship & aviation) | 1A3aii+1A3b+1A3c+1A3dii+1A3e |
| Agriculture - Agricultural soils, crop residues burning, enteric fermentation, manure management, indirect N2O emissions from agriculture | 3A+3C1b+3C2+3C3+3C4+3C5+3C6+3C7 |
| Waste - Solid waste disposal and waste water treatment | 4 |
| International shipping and aviation | 1A3ai+1A3di |
Based on the EDGAR_2025_GHG emission gridmaps up to 2024 (Crippa et al. 2025), CITIES emissions by sector and country are extracted. Residential and road transport proxies were updated in June 2026, as explained in Crippa et al., 2026.
CITIES definitions are based on GHS-UCDB.
Based on the EDGAR_2025_GHG emission gridmaps up to 2024 (Crippa et al. 2025). Residential and road transport proxies were updated in June 2026, as explained in Crippa et al., 2026.
For each substance annual gridmaps (2024) are provided. Emission gridmaps are expressed in ton substance / 0.01degree x 0.01degree / year for the GeoTiff files.
Banja, M., Crippa, M., Pisoni, E., Guizzardi, D., Ciarlantini, S., Todeschi, V., Melica, G., Vetters, N., Ulpiani, G., Palermo, V. (2026). Sensitivity of city-scale greenhouse gas emissions to urban boundary definitions and extraction methodologies. Submitted at Urban Climate journal.
Ciarlantini, S., Guizzardi, D., Pisoni, E., Banja, M., Crippa, M. (2026). From local to global: comparing emission trends and mitigation efforts for GHG and air pollutants in cities and countries. Submitted at Environmental Research Letters.
Crippa, M., Guizzardi, D., Pagani, F., Banja, M., Muntean, M. et al. (2025). GHG emissions of all world countries - 2025 Report, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, doi:10.2760/9816914, JRC143227.
Crippa, M., Guizzardi, D., Pagani, F., Schiavina, M., Melchiorri, M., Pisoni, E., Graziosi, F., Muntean, M., Maes, J., Dijkstra, L., Van Damme, M., Clarisse, L., and Coheur, P. (2024). Insights into the spatial distribution of global, national, and subnational greenhouse gas emissions in the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR v8.0), Earth System Science Data, 16, 2811–2830, doi:10.5194/essd-16-2811-2024.
Crippa, M., Guizzardi, D., Pisoni, E., Ciarlantini, S., Melchiorri, M., Schiavina, M., Hormigos Feliu, C., Dijkstra, L. (2026). GHG, NOx and PM2.5 emissions in cities, towns and rural areas. Submitted at Nature Communications Earth & Environment.
Crippa, M., Guizzardi, D., Pisoni, E., Solazzo, E., Guion, A., Muntean, M., Florczyk, A., Schiavina, M., Melchiorri, M., Fuentes Hutfilter, A. (2021). Global anthropogenic emissions in urban areas: patterns, trends, and challenges, Environmental Research Letters 16 074033, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac00e2.
Hormigos Feliu, C., Iodice, S., Dijkstra, L., Casati, P., Seraphim, A., Bertozzi, C., Kakoulaki, G., Foster, G., Ulpiani, G., Melica, G., Kuster, C., Vetters, N., Todeschi, V., Hernandez Moral, G., Treville, A., Crippa, M., Guizzardi, D., Ciarlantini, S., Bertassello, L., Feyen, L., Mentaschi, L. (2026). State of European Cities - Chapter 5: City residents are using less energy and less land, while reducing emissions and air pollution. European Commission – in preparation.
©European Union 2025, European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) Community GHG database, comprising IEA-EDGAR CO2, EDGAR CH4, EDGAR N2O and EDGAR F-gases version EDGAR_2025_GHG (2025). Unless otherwise noted, all material owned by the European Union is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. This means that reuse is allowed, provided that appropriate credit is given and any changes are indicated.
All emissions, except for CO2 emissions from fuel combustion, are from the EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) Community GHG database comprising IEA-EDGAR CO2, EDGAR CH4, EDGAR N2O and EDGAR F-gases version EDGAR_2025_GHG (2025).
IEA-EDGAR CO2, a component of the EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) Community GHG database version EDGAR_2025_GHG (2025) including or based on data from IEA (2024) Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Energy, www.iea.org/data-and-statistics, as modified by the Joint Research Centre.
IEA-EDGAR CO2 (v4) data are based on data from IEA (2024) Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Energy, www.iea.org/data-and-statistics, as modified by the Joint Research Centre, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Users of the IEA-EDGAR CO2 data should contact the IEA at compliance@iea.org if they wish to use such data outside the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence.
Co-authorship and involvement of the EDGAR Community, which includes the IEA for fossil CO2 emissions, in the emission data analysis is highly appreciated. User's comments and requests can be sent via email to the authors. For IEA data, please refer to emissions@iea.org.
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Crippa, M., Guizzardi, D., Ciarlantini, S., Pagani, F., Banja, M., Muntean, M., Pisoni, E.: EDGAR_GHG_by_city_2026, dataset, https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/edgar_cities, 2026.
EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) Community GHG Database, a collaboration between the European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), the International Energy Agency (IEA), and comprising IEA-EDGAR CO2, EDGAR CH4, EDGAR N2O, EDGAR F-GASES version EDGAR_2025_GHG (2025) European Commission, JRC (Datasets). The complete citation of the EDGAR Community GHG Database is available in the 'Sources and References' section.
IEA-EDGAR CO2, a component of the EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) Community GHG database version EDGAR_2025_GHG (2025) including or based on data from IEA (2024) Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Energy, www.iea.org/data-and-statistics, as modified by the Joint Research Centre.
Users of the data are obliged to acknowledge the source of the data also with reference to the EDGAR_2025_GHG (2025) website (link) and/or relevant reports.
For more information or data: JRC-EDGAR@ec.europa.eu.
For IEA data, please refer to emissions@iea.org or compliance@iea.org for terms questions.