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Consumption-based carbon intensity

GCB
See all data and research on:
CO2 & Greenhouse Gas Emissions

What you should know about this indicator

  • Consumption-based emissions attribute the emissions generated in the production of goods and services according to where they were consumed, rather than where they were produced.
  • The data is calculated by adjusting 'production-based' emissions (emissions produced domestically) for trade: Consumption-based emissions equals production-based emissions, minus emissions embedded in exports, plus emissions embedded in imports.
  • If a country's consumption-based emissions are higher than its production emissions it is a net importer of carbon dioxide. If its consumption-based emissions are lower, then it is a net exporter.
  • Consumption-based emissions are not available for all countries because not all countries have sufficient, high-quality trade data. But those without complete data are a small fraction (3%) of the global total.
  • This data measures carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuels and industry and does not include emissions from land use change, deforestation, soils, or vegetation.
  • Emissions from international aviation and shipping are not included in any country or region's emissions. They are only included in the global total emissions.
Consumption-based carbon intensity
GCB
Annual consumption-based emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂), measured in kilograms per dollar of GDP (2011 international-$).
Source
Global Carbon Budget (2024); Bolt and van Zanden - Maddison Project Database 2023 – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
November 13, 2024
Next expected update
November 2025
Date range
1990–2022
Unit
kilograms per international-$

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The Global Carbon Budget was founded by the Global Carbon Project (GCP) international science team to track the trends in global carbon emissions and sinks and is a key measure of progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement. It's widely recognized as the most comprehensive report of its kind.

The GCP has been publishing estimates of global and national fossil CO2 emissions since 2001. In the first instance these were simple re-publications of data from another source, but over subsequent years refinements have been made in response to feedback and identification of inaccuracies.

Retrieved on
November 13, 2024
Retrieved from
https://globalcarbonbudget.org/
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.
Andrew, R. M., & Peters, G. P. (2024). The Global Carbon Project's fossil CO2 emissions dataset (2024v17) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13981696
The data files of the Global Carbon Budget can be found at: https://globalcarbonbudget.org/carbonbudget/
For more details, see the original paper:
Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Bakker, D. C. E., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Luijkx, I. T., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Jackson, R. B., Alin, S. R., Anthoni, P., Barbero, L., Bates, N. R., Becker, M., Bellouin, N., Decharme, B., Bopp, L., Brasika, I. B. M., Cadule, P., Chamberlain, M. A., Chandra, N., Chau, T.-T.-T., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Cronin, M., Dou, X., Enyo, K., Evans, W., Falk, S., Feely, R. A., Feng, L., Ford, D. J., Gasser, T., Ghattas, J., Gkritzalis, T., Grassi, G., Gregor, L., Gruber, N., Gürses, Ö., Harris, I., Hefner, M., Heinke, J., Houghton, R. A., Hurtt, G. C., Iida, Y., Ilyina, T., Jacobson, A. R., Jain, A., Jarníková, T., Jersild, A., Jiang, F., Jin, Z., Joos, F., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Kennedy, D., Klein Goldewijk, K., Knauer, J., Korsbakken, J. I., Körtzinger, A., Lan, X., Lefèvre, N., Li, H., Liu, J., Liu, Z., Ma, L., Marland, G., Mayot, N., McGuire, P. C., McKinley, G. A., Meyer, G., Morgan, E. J., Munro, D. R., Nakaoka, S.-I., Niwa, Y., O'Brien, K. M., Olsen, A., Omar, A. M., Ono, T., Paulsen, M., Pierrot, D., Pocock, K., Poulter, B., Powis, C. M., Rehder, G., Resplandy, L., Robertson, E., Rödenbeck, C., Rosan, T. M., Schwinger, J., Séférian, R., Smallman, T. L., Smith, S. M., Sospedra-Alfonso, R., Sun, Q., Sutton, A. J., Sweeney, C., Takao, S., Tans, P. P., Tian, H., Tilbrook, B., Tsujino, H., Tubiello, F., van der Werf, G. R., van Ooijen, E., Wanninkhof, R., Watanabe, M., Wimart-Rousseau, C., Yang, D., Yang, X., Yuan, W., Yue, X., Zaehle, S., Zeng, J., and Zheng, B.: Global Carbon Budget 2023, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 5301-5369, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5301-2023, 2023.

The Maddison Project Database provides information on comparative economic growth and income levels over the very long run. The 2023 version of this database covers 169 countries and the period up to 2022. The new estimates are presented and discussed in Bolt and Van Zanden (2024), "Maddison style estimates of the evolution of the world economy: A new 2023 update", Journal of Economic Surveys, 1–41.

Retrieved on
April 26, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-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.
    

  • Bolt, Jutta and Jan Luiten van Zanden (2024), "Maddison style estimates of the evolution of the world economy: A new 2023 update", Journal of Economic Surveys, 1–41. DOI: 10.1111/joes.12618.
    • 

  • The Maddison Project Database is based on the work of many researchers who have produced estimates of economic growth and population for individual countries. The full list of sources for this historical data is given in the original dataset.
    •

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.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
  • Data on global emissions has been converted from tonnes of carbon to tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) using a conversion factor of 3.664.
  • Emissions from the Kuwaiti oil fires in 1991 have been included as part of Kuwait's emissions for that year.
  • Country's share of the global population is calculated using our population dataset, based on different sources.
  • Each country's share of global CO₂ emissions from flaring has been calculated using global CO₂ emissions from flaring provided in the Global Carbon Budget dataset.

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.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

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: Consumption-based carbon intensity”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2023) - “CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”. Data adapted from Global Carbon Project, Bolt and van Zanden. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-based-carbon-intensity [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:

Global Carbon Budget (2024); Bolt and van Zanden - Maddison Project Database 2023 – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Global Carbon Budget (2024); Bolt and van Zanden - Maddison Project Database 2023 – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Consumption-based carbon intensity – GCB” [dataset]. Global Carbon Project, “Global Carbon Budget”; Bolt and van Zanden, “Maddison Project Database 2023” [original data]. Retrieved November 22, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-based-carbon-intensity