Climate Watch Country Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data and Methodology

This Technical Note is part of Climate Watch within Climate, and Climate. Reach out to Mengpin Ge for more information.

The availability of open, high-quality, consistent, and comprehensive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data is essential to understanding the global trend in GHG emissions, and for countries to see their emission profiles, compare their impacts with those of other countries, identify mitigation opportunities, and reduce emissions.

Drawing data from several published datasets, Climate Watch Country Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data offer comprehensive and comparable emissions data for 193 countries plus the European Union starting in 1990. The latest available data usually have a three-year lag; for example, in 2023, we reported emissions data from 2020.

This technical note details the sources and methodologies used to compile GHG inventories at the country and global levels in the Climate Watch dataset. The dataset includes emissions of all GHGs across all sectors, namely energy; industrial processes; agriculture; waste; and land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF). It also addresses the limitations and uncertainties associated with using emissions data.

World Greenhouse Gas Emissions: 2019