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Global Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions

Since 1751 roughly 321 billion tons of carbon have been released to the atmosphere from the consumption of fossil fuels and cement production. Half of these emissions have occurred since the mid 1970s.

The 2005 global fossil-fuel carbon emission estimate, 7985 million metric tons of carbon, represents an all-time high and a 3.8% increase from 2004.

Globally, liquid and solid fuels accounted for 76.7% of the emissions from fossil-fuel burning and cement production in 2005. Combustion of gas fuels (e.g., natural gas) accounted for 18.6% (1484 million metric tons of carbon) of the total emissions from fossil fuels in 2005 and reflects a gradually increasing global utilization of natural gas.

Emissions from cement production (315 million metric tons of carbon in 2005) have more than doubled since the mid 1970s and now represent 3.9% of global CO2 releases from fossil-fuel burning and cement production. Gas flaring, which accounted for roughly 2% of global emissions during the 1970s, now accounts for less than 1% of global fossil-fuel releases.

Global and national data are from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC)

[ Credits: Marland, G., T.A. Boden, and R.J. Andres. 2008. Global, Regional, and National CO2 Emissions. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.]

Note, due to the historical dimension of this data, some political changes must be considered. For example, three data sets are relevant to get a complete picture about Germany: Germany (1972-1945 & 1990-2005) , Former German Democratic Republic and Federal Republic of Germany (both 1945-1990). Similar applies to Korea, Vietnam, USSR, Czechoslovakia and other countries.

You may try any of these predefined regions:

Planet, USA, Australia, United Kingdom, France (including Monaco), China (mainland), India

Note: global data is measured in million metric tons and national emissions in thousand metric tons, per capita emissions are in metric tons. The factor to convert tons of carbon into tons of carbon dioxyde is 3.664.