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Consumption-based CO₂ emissions

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 the data for any individual country or region. They are only counted in the global total.
Consumption-based CO₂ emissions
Annual consumption-based emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂), measured in tonnes.
Source
Global Carbon Budget (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
November 21, 2024
Next expected update
November 2025
Date range
1990–2023
Unit
tonnes

Related research and writing

Featured image

How do CO2 emissions compare when we adjust for trade?

Hannah Ritchie

Explore charts that include this data

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The Global Carbon Budget was established by the Global Carbon Project (GCP) to track global carbon emissions and sinks.

This dataset makes it possible to assess whether countries are making progress toward the goals of the Paris Agreement and is widely recognized as the most comprehensive report of its kind.

Since 2001, the GCP has published estimates of global and national fossil CO₂ emissions. Initially, these were simple republished data from other sources, but over time, refinements were made based on feedback and correction of inaccuracies.

Retrieved on
November 21, 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.

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
  • Global emissions are converted from tonnes of carbon to tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) using a factor of 3.664. This is the conversion factor recommended by the Global Carbon Project. It reflects that one tonne of carbon, when fully oxidized, forms 3.664 tonnes of CO₂, based on the relative molecular weights of carbon and oxygen in CO₂.
  • Emissions from the 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires are included in Kuwait's emissions for that year.

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 CO₂ emissions”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”. Data adapted from Global Carbon Project. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250716-155402/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions.html [online resource] (archived on July 16, 2025).
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) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Global Carbon Budget (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Consumption-based CO₂ emissions” [dataset]. Global Carbon Project, “Global Carbon Budget” [original data]. Retrieved July 18, 2025 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250716-155402/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions.html (archived on July 16, 2025).