Data

Carbon dioxide emissions factors

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About this data

Carbon dioxide emissions factors
Amount of carbon dioxide emissions produced per unit of a specific energy source.
Source
IPCC - Emission Factor Database (2023) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 24, 2023
Next expected update
January 2025
Date range
2023–2023
Unit
kilograms per megawatt-hour

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Emission Factor Database (EFDB) is a library of emission factors and parameters that can be used for estimation of national greenhouse gas emissions/removals. For more details, see the User Manual.

Retrieved on
October 24, 2023
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Emission Factor Database (EFDB) contains default data from IPCC Guidelines and data from other sources (e.g., peer-reviewed papers) with background information.
The data extracted from the IPCC EFDB comes from the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, 1A, Sheet 1 of 4 (page A1.6) in Annex 1 of Volume 2.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

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Notes on our processing step for this indicator
  • Data has been converted from kilograms per terajoule (kg/TJ) to kilograms per megawatt-hour (kg/MWh) using a conversion factor of 0.0036.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Carbon dioxide emissions factors”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2023) - “CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”. Data adapted from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-emissions-factor [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

IPCC - Emission Factor Database (2023) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

IPCC - Emission Factor Database (2023) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Carbon dioxide emissions factors” [dataset]. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Emission Factor Database” [original data]. Retrieved December 7, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-emissions-factor