Greenhouse gas emissions

Annual greenhouse gas emissions per person (height of vertical bars) and per country (area of vertical bars) of the fifteen high-emitting countries[1]

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities intensify the greenhouse effect. This contributes to climate change. Carbon dioxide (CO2), from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, is one of the most important factors in causing climate change. The largest emitters are China followed by the United States. The United States has higher emissions per capita. The main producers fueling the emissions globally are large oil and gas companies. Emissions from human activities have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by about 50% over pre-industrial levels. The growing levels of emissions have varied, but have been consistent among all greenhouse gases. Emissions in the 2010s averaged 56 billion tons a year, higher than any decade before.[2] Total cumulative emissions from 1870 to 2017 were 425±20 GtC (1558 GtCO2) from fossil fuels and industry, and 180±60 GtC (660 GtCO2) from land use change. Land-use change, such as deforestation, caused about 31% of cumulative emissions over 1870–2017, coal 32%, oil 25%, and gas 10%.[3]

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main greenhouse gas resulting from human activities. It accounts for more than half of warming. Methane (CH4) emissions have almost the same short-term impact.[4] Nitrous oxide (N2O) and fluorinated gases (F-gases) play a lesser role in comparison.

Electricity generation, heat and transport are major emitters; overall energy is responsible for around 73% of emissions.[5] Deforestation and other changes in land use also emit carbon dioxide and methane. The largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions is agriculture, closely followed by gas venting and fugitive emissions from the fossil-fuel industry. The largest agricultural methane source is livestock. Agricultural soils emit nitrous oxide partly due to fertilizers. Similarly, fluorinated gases from refrigerants play an outsized role in total human emissions.

The current CO2-equivalent emission rates averaging 6.6 tonnes per person per year,[6] are well over twice the estimated rate 2.3 tons[7][8] required to stay within the 2030 Paris Agreement increase of 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) over pre-industrial levels.[9] Annual per capita emissions in the industrialized countries are typically as much as ten times the average in developing countries.[10]

The carbon footprint (or greenhouse gas footprint) serves as an indicator to compare the amount of greenhouse gases emitted over the entire life cycle from the production of a good or service along the supply chain to its final consumption.[11][12] Carbon accounting (or greenhouse gas accounting) is a framework of methods to measure and track how much greenhouse gas an organization emits.[13]

  1. ^ "Territorial (MtCO2)". GlobalCarbonAtlas.org. Retrieved 30 December 2021. (choose "Chart view"; use download link)
    ● Data for 2020 is also presented in Popovich, Nadja; Plumer, Brad (12 November 2021). "Who Has The Most Historical Responsibility for Climate Change?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 29 December 2021.
    ● Source for country populations: "List of the populations of the world's countries, dependencies, and territories". Encyclopedia Britannica.
  2. ^ "Chapter 2: Emissions trends and drivers" (PDF). Ipcc_Ar6_Wgiii. 2022. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-04-12. Retrieved 2022-04-04.
  3. ^ "Global Carbon Project (GCP)". www.globalcarbonproject.org. Archived from the original on 4 April 2019. Retrieved 2019-05-19.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference ch4-vs-co2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Ritchie, Hannah; Roser, Max; Rosado, Pablo (2020-05-11). "CO2 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions". Our World in Data.
  6. ^ widworld_admin (2021-10-20). "The World #InequalityReport 2022 presents the most up-to-date & complete data on inequality worldwide". World Inequality Report 2022 (in French). Retrieved 2023-07-14.
  7. ^ "Carbon inequality in 2030: Per capita consumption emissions and the 1.5C goal – IEEP AISBL". Retrieved 2023-07-14.
  8. ^ Gore, Tim (2021-11-05). Carbon Inequality in 2030: Per capita consumption emissions and the 1.5 °C goal. Institute for European Environmental Policy. doi:10.21201/2021.8274. hdl:10546/621305. ISBN 9781787488274. S2CID 242037589.
  9. ^ "AR6 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change — IPCC". Retrieved 2023-07-14.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference grubb kyoto protocol was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ "What is a carbon footprint". www.conservation.org. Retrieved 2023-05-28.
  12. ^ IPCC, 2022: Annex I: Glossary Archived 13 March 2023 at the Wayback Machine [van Diemen, R., J.B.R. Matthews, V. Möller, J.S. Fuglestvedt, V. Masson-Delmotte, C. Méndez, A. Reisinger, S. Semenov (eds)]. In IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Archived 2 August 2022 at the Wayback Machine [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. Al Khourdajie, R. van Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, J. Malley, (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. doi: 10.1017/9781009157926.020
  13. ^ "Carbon Accounting". Corporate Finance Institute. Retrieved 2023-01-06.

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