GHG emissions of all world countries

Introduction

Since the beginning of 21st century, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions had followed an increasing trend mainly due to the increase in 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.

According to the latest data, global GHG emissions in 2023 reached 53.0 Gt CO_2eq (without Land Use, land Use Change and Forestry). The 2023 data represent the highest level recorded and experienced an increase of 1.9% or 994 Mt CO_2eq compared to the levels in 2022. In the framework of UNFCCC, countries are developing national emissions inventories and propose/implement actions to mitigate GHG emissions. Fossil CO₂ emissions, which are the main contributors to global GHG emissions are still increasing at world level despite climate change mitigation agreements. In this context, EDGAR provides an independent estimate of greenhouse gases for all world countries, 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 2024, this report presents GHG emission time series up to 2023, including emissions from all anthropogenic sectors and Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF).

Main findings

China, the United States, India, the EU27, Russia and Brazil were the world’s largest GHG emitters in 2023. Together they account for 49.8% of global population, 63.2% of global gross domestic product, 64.2% of global fossil fuel consumption and 62.7% of global GHG emissions. Among these top emitters, in 2023 China, India, Russia and Brazil increased their emissions compared to 2022, with India having the largest increase in relative terms (+ 6.1%) and China the largest absolute increase by 784 Mt CO_2eq. With only two exceptions, 2009 (global financial crisis) and 2020 (COVID-19), global GHG emissions have grown steadily since the beginning of the 21st century, mainly due to the increase in fossil CO₂ emissions by China, India, and other emerging economies. Based on the emission estimates for 2023 provided by EDGAR, global GHG emissions increased by 1.9% compared to 2022, reaching 53.0 Gt CO_2eq.

In 2023, the majority of GHG emissions consisted of fossil CO₂ accounting for 73.7% of total emissions, while CH₄ contributed for 18.9% to the total, N₂O for 4.7% and F-gases for 2.7%. Global fossil CO₂ emissions increased by 72.1% since 1990. The increases in CH₄ and N₂O emissions have followed a somewhat slower pace: CH₄ increased by 28.2% and N₂O by 32.4% between 1990 and 2023, while F-gases have seen a four-fold increase (+294%) in the same period. As far EU27 is concerned, its GHG emissions, excluding LULUCF, were 33.9% lower than in 1990 reaching 3.22 Gt CO_2eq. In 2023, EU27 emissions decreased by 7.5% (-261 Mt CO_2eq) and the EU27’s share of global emissions decreased from 6.8% in 2022 to 6.1% in 2023.

In 2023, all EU27 countries except Croatia and Cyprus experienced a decrease in their emission levels compared to the previous year. In terms of contribution to the EU27's GHG emissions in 2023, Germany remained the largest emitter, followed by France, Italy, Poland and Spain.

In the EU27, all sectors experienced a decrease in their GHG emissions in 2023 compared to 2022. The largest relative drop was observed in the power industry sector, in which emissions decreased by 20.1%. The industrial combustion and processes showed the second-highest decrease, falling by 8.1% below the 2022 levels.

The data are presented in the table below for key years, to allow easy comparison of different countries. Data for individual GHGs (fossil CO₂, CH₄, N₂O and F-gases) are available in the excel file in the download section (data sheet 'GHG_by_sector_and_country').

Data Download

Emissions by country

The data are presented in the table below for key years, to allow easy comparison of different countries. Data for individual GHGs (fossil CO₂, CH₄, N₂O and F-gases) are available in the excel file in the download section (data sheet 'GHG_by_sector_and_country').

Throughout this report, the term ‘country’ or ‘countries’ is used to refer to entities that include countries and/or territories in accordance with the list available at the Interinstitutional Style Guide of the European Union and the “Short name” definition listed in the "List of countries, territories and currencies" table at this link has been used (updated on 30/06/2024). This list does not represent the official position of the European institutions with regard to the legal status or policy of the entities mentioned. It is a harmonisation of often divergent lists and practices.

EDGAR data are expressed in metric units.

Sources and references

Artés, T., Oom, D., De Rigo, D., Durrant, T.H., Maianti, P., Libertà, G. and San-Miguel-Ayanz, J. A global wildfire dataset for the analysis of fire regimes and fire behaviour. Scientific data, 6(1), 1-11 (2019). doi:10.1038/s41597-019-0312-2.

EI, Energy Institute, 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, 2024, https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review, Last access: July 2024.

FAOSTAT (2024), Statistics Division of the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN: www.fao.org/faostat, Last access May 2024.

Global Flaring and Methane Reduction Partnership (GFMR), 2012-2023 data for gas consumption for flaring, 2024, https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/gasflaringreduction/global-flaring-data#indicators-by-country, Last Access: June 2024.

IATA (2024), International Air Transport Association Statistics, www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/pressroom/fact-sheets/industry-statistics, 2024.

IEA World Energy Balances - 2023 Edition, www.iea.org, All rights reserved, as modified by Joint Research Centre, European Commission, 2023a.

IEA Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Energy - 2023 Edition, www.iea.org, 2023b.

IEA World energy balances: IEA family and beyond, April 2024 Edition, www.iea.org.

IFA (2024), Urea consumption (updates 2010-2019) and production (updates 2020) statistics, 2024, www.ifastat.org/.

USGS, USGS Commodity Statistics (May 2024), (www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/commodity-statistics-and-information), 2024.

WB (2024), data of GDP PPP, (constant 2017 international $) (expressed in 1000 US dollar, and adjusted to the Purchasing Power Parity of 2017) for 1990-2023, World Bank, July 2024.

World Steel Association, (worldsteel) (2024), Steel Statistical Yearbook 2024, https://worldsteel.org, 2024.

Conditions of use

©European Union 2024, 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_2024_GHG (2024). 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_2024_GHG (2024).

IEA-EDGAR CO₂, a component of the EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) Community GHG database version EDGAR_2024_GHG (2024) including or based on data from IEA (2023) Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Energy, www.iea.org/data-and-statistics, as modified by the Joint Research Centre.

IEA-EDGAR CO₂ (v3) data are based on data from IEA (2023) 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.

Disclaimer: Without prejudice to the rules applying to the information and data made available by the European Union (in particular the European Commission), as available here and to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the European Union ("the Union") and the International Energy Agency ("IEA") disclaim all responsibility or liability in relation to any and all information distributed, published or otherwise made available by them on the EDGAR website, in this dataset and/or in this publication. The Union and the IEA provide any such information as-is and as-available, and make no representations, conditions or warranties of any kind concerning this information, whether express, implied, statutory, or other (including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of title, non-infringement, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose). To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall the Union or the IEA be liable to any third party on any legal theory (including, without limitation, negligence) or otherwise for any direct, special, indirect, incidental, consequential, punitive, exemplary, or other losses, costs, expenses, or damages arising out of the distribution, publication, making available or use of any such information.

How to cite the content of reports

Crippa, M., Guizzardi, D., Pagani, F., Banja, M., Muntean, M., Schaaf, E., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Becker, W.E., Quadrelli, R., Risquez Martin, A., Taghavi-Moharamli, P., Köykkä, J., Grassi, G., Rossi, S., Melo, J., Oom, D., Branco, A., San-Miguel, J., Manca, G., Pisoni, E., Vignati, E. and Pekar, F., GHG emissions of all world countries, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2024, doi:10.2760/4002897, JRC138862

How to cite the use of underlying data

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_2024_GHG (2024) 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_2024_GHG (2024) including or based on data from IEA (2023) 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_2024_GHG (2024) website (link) and/or relevant reports.

Contacts

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.