Trends in Global CO2 and Total Greenhouse Gas emissions; 2019 report

Growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 highest since 2011

Global emissions growth was 2.0% in 2018 and there is no sign of any of these emissions peaking, as yet. The increase in global emissions was mainly due to increasing fossil CO₂ emissions, which increased by 2.0% in 2018. Global emissions of methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) increased by 1.8% and 0.8%, respectively. The emissions of fluorinated gases (so-called F-gases) continued to grow by an estimated 6% in 2018.

With about 72% for fossil CO₂ and 19% for methane, these emissions form the lion’s share of global greenhouse gas emissions (excluding those from land-use change). The other greenhouse gases are N₂O (6% share) and F-gases (3%); these emissions continued to grow at rates similar to those in 2016 and 2017.

Greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 were about 57% higher than in 1990 and 43% higher than in 2000. The 2018 global greenhouse gas emissions amounted to 55.6 GtCO₂ eq when including the — very uncertain — land-use-change emissions (estimated at 3.8 GtCO₂ eq).

In 2018, emissions increased in the four largest emitting countries and decreased in the EU and Japan

The five largest emitting countries and the European Union, together, accounted for 62%, globally. In 2018, a real increase in  emissions was shown in four of these countries: in China (+1.9%), India (+5.5%), the United States (+2.7%) and the Russian Federation (+5.1%), whereas emissions decreased in the European Union (-1.5%) and Japan (-1.2%).

Methodology

These emissions were calculated based on the EDGAR database version v5.0 for 1970–2015; for CO₂ from the use of fossil fuel and carbonates, they were mainly based on IEA energy statistics, and for other gases, we used several statistics, including the FAO agricultural statistics. A fast-track method was applied to estimate the 2016–2018 trend, mainly using international activity statistics from various sources.