Annual emissions figures are often used to compare countries’ contribution to climate change. But this metric often reflects differences in population size across the world.
To understand the ‘footprint’ of the average person in a given country, this chart shows per capita emissions.
These figures reflect ‘production-based’ emissions, so do not correct for traded goods.
This interactive chart shows the year-on-year growth in annual CO2 emissions.
Year-to-year changes in emissions can vary a lot – this can create a particularly ‘noisy’ time series.
When we only look at emissions produced today, we fail to recognise historical responsibility for emissions in recent decades or centuries.
This interactive chart shows cumulative CO2 emissions – the sum of emissions produced since 1751 to the given year. This allows us to understand how much of the total CO2 emissions to date has been emitted by a given country.
When countries set targets, measure or compare CO2 emissions, they tend to focus on production-based emissions – CO2 emitted within a country’s own borders. However, this fails to capture emissions from traded goods – the CO2 emitted in the production of goods elsewhere, which are later imported (or the opposite: emissions from goods that are exported).
We can estimate consumption-based CO2 emissions by correcting for trade. These emissions are shown in the interactive chart. Note that the resolution of data needed to calculate this is not available for all countries.
Looking at a country’s annual emissions is useful, but it can be hard to put these numbers in context of the global total. Is 10 million tonnes of CO2 large or small; what about 100 million; or 1 billion tonnes?
This interactive chart shows annual emissions as a percentage of the global total in a given year.
Just as with annual emissions, simply presenting cumulative CO2 figures can be hard to contextualize. Has a given country’s contribution to the global total been large or small?
This chart shows the country’s cumulative emissions as a share of global cumulative emissions.