CO2 emissions of all world countries

Introduction

Since the beginning of 21st century and until 2019, global GHG emissions had followed an increasing trend mainly due to the increase in CO2 emissions from China and the other emerging economies. As a result, the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases substantially increased enhancing the natural greenhouse effect, which may negatively affect the life on the Earth.

In 2020 global fossil CO2 emissions decreased by 5.3% in comparison to 2019, mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in 2021, global emissions bounced back almost to the level of 2019, reaching 37.9 Gt, just 0.36% lower than in 2019, with the world getting back to pre-pandemic CO2 emission levels.

In the framework of UNFCCC, countries are developing national emissions inventories and propose/implement actions to mitigate GHG emissions. CO2 emissions, which are the main responsible for global warming are still increasing at world level despite climate change mitigation agreements. In this context, EDGAR provides an independent estimate of greenhouse gases for each world country, based on a robust and consistent methodology stemming from the latest IPCC guidelines and most recent activity data. Following the latest update released in September 2022, emission data are now available for fossil CO2 for each country for the time period 1970-2021 while national emissions for other GHGs are available for 1970-2018.

Main findings

In 2021, China, the United States, the EU27, India, Russia and Japan remained the world’s largest CO2 emitters. Together they account for 49.2% of global population, 62.4% of global Gross Domestic Product, 66.4% of global fossil fuel consumption and 67.8% of global fossil CO2 emissions. All six increased their fossil CO2 emissions in 2021 compared to 2020, with India and Russia having the largest increases in relative terms (10.5% and 8.1%, respectively).

Among the 16 major emitters accounting for more than 1% of global CO2 emissions, seven countries (China, India, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Türkiye) have higher CO2 emissions in 2021 than in 2019 with Türkiye showing the highest biannual increase (+7.9%).

By comparison, the EU27 and eight other countries (United States, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Canada, South Africa, Mexico, and Australia) emitted less in 2021 than in 2019, with Mexico showing the largest biannual decrease (-13%).

Similarly, global per capita CO2 emissions bounced back to the pre-pandemic levels, bringing back with the overall have increased from 1990 to 2021 to 13% (from 4.26 t CO2/cap/yr to 4.81 t CO2/cap/yr).

In 2020, regardless the important decrease of GDP observed in the majority of world countries, global fossil CO2 emissions per unit of GDP continued their decreasing trend. On the contrary in 2021 in several countries emissions bounced back more than GDP recovery, resulting in an increase of CO2 emissions per unit of GDP (+1.1% in EU27, +0.7% in US, +1.5% in India, +3.1% in Russia and + 1.1% in Japan)

EU27, total fossil CO2 emissions increased by 6.5% (0.17 Gt) in 2021 compared with 2020. However, this increase is just half of the reduction that took place between 2019 and 2020 (-10.8%), consequently the EU27 emissions fell by 5% between 2021 and 2019.

From a longer-term perspective, fossil CO2 emissions in the EU27 have followed a decreasing trend over the past two decades, and in 2021 they were 2.78 Gt, i.e., 27.4% below the 1990 level. The EU27’s share of global emissions has also decreased over the last years, from 16.8% in 1990 to 8.5% in 2015 and 7.3% in 2021.

How to cite

Crippa, M., Guizzardi, D., Banja, M., Solazzo, E., Muntean, M., Schaaf, E., Pagani, F., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Olivier, J., Quadrelli, R., Risquez Martin, A., Taghavi-Moharamli, P., Grassi, G., Rossi, S., Jacome Felix Oom, D., Branco, A., San-Miguel-Ayanz, J. and Vignati, E., CO2 emissions of all world countries - 2022 Report, EUR 31182 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2022, doi:10.2760/730164, JRC130363

Data Download

Fossil CO2 emissions by country

The data are presented in the table below for key years, to allow easy comparison of different countries.

"Country names" are consistent with the Interinstitutional Style Guide of the European Commission, the "Short name" definition listed in the "List of countries, territories and currencies" table has been used (as of 01/09/2022)

EDGAR data are expressed in metric units.

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Contacts

For more information or data: JRC-EDGAR@ec.europa.eu