| iso_code | country | year | co2 | co2_per_capita | trade_co2 | cement_co2 | cement_co2_per_capita | coal_co2 | coal_co2_per_capita | ... | ghg_excluding_lucf_per_capita | methane | methane_per_capita | nitrous_oxide | nitrous_oxide_per_capita | population | gdp | primary_energy_consumption | energy_per_capita | energy_per_gdp | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7112 | ERI | Eritrea | 1973.0 | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | ... | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | 1423749.0 | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN |
| 14015 | MDV | Maldives | 2001.0 | 0.462 | 1.612 | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | ... | 2.061 | 0.06 | 0.21 | 0.01 | 0.035 | 286309.0 | NaN | 2.402 | 8397.862 | NaN |
| 7506 | NaN | Europe | 1754.0 | 9.358 | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | 9.358 | NaN | ... | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN |
| 23938 | USA | United States | 1904.0 | 882.058 | 10.341 | NaN | 0.003 | 0.0 | 818.270 | 9.593 | ... | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | 85296008.0 | 7.146219e+11 | NaN | NaN | NaN |
| 20181 | SVK | Slovakia | 1884.0 | 5.964 | 2.214 | NaN | NaN | NaN | 5.964 | 2.214 | ... | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN | 2693422.0 | NaN | NaN | NaN | NaN |
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Carbon Dioxide has been a significant cause of pollution and the primary driver of global climate change. It is commonly acknowledged that to avoid the effects of climate change; the world must reduce emissions as soon as possible. But, how this responsibility is shared between regions, countries, and individuals is a question we need to look into.
The dataset is a collection of critical CO2 and Greenhouse gas emissions matrices maintained by the organization ‘Our World in Data.’ The data set has co2 and other greenhouse gases emissions information along with energy power consumption, GDP, and population data of different countries yearwise. The CO2 emissions data is sourced from the Global Carbon Project, and Greenhouse gas emissions data is sourced from the Climate Watch portal. The primary energy and GDP data are collected from BP Statistical Review of World Energy and World Development Indicators, World Bank.
The dataset has annual production emissions of CO2 in a million tonnes and CO2 per capita in a million tonnes per person. CO2 per capita represents CO2 emissions per person in the country. It is beneficial in comparing countries as the population has a significant role in a country’s development. The dataset also contains CO2 emissions from different sources such as coal, oil, flaring, gas, and other industries. The dataset also has data on the annual consumption-based and cumulative product-based emission of CO2. There is also data about the yearly emission of Greenhouse gas, methane, and nitrous oxide.
We have tried to focus on CO2 data and looked into how CO2 emissions have been for different types of countries in different ears and how CO2 emissions affect on Country’s development. As we know, CO2 emission is necessary and almost a side effect of industrial development. Developed countries have gone through more CO2 emissions, and developing countries are going through this process now, as we can see in the data visualization. We have also tried to see CO2 emission with GDP improvement and energy consumption, also CO2 emission from different sources.
The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis had an impact on global CO2. The global CO2 emissions declined by 5.8% in 2020. It went from 36702.503 million tonnes to 34807.259 million tonnes. It was almost 2000 million tonnes of CO2, and the largest ever decline followed the global pandemic crisis. This decline is the equivalent of removing all of the European Union's CO2 emissions. Though China was one of the very few countries where emissions increased. The United States and Europe had an apparent decline in CO2 emissions.
The 2009 economic crisis also had a similar impact on the global CO2 emission. It declined by almost 1.5% in 2009. Though the CO2 emissions quickly went up in 2010. There were around 500 million tonnes fewer emissions of CO2. We can see all major world events have impacted CO2 emissions, whether it is the end of the cold war or the end of the World War. We can spot different crisis effects on Global CO2 emissions.
The CO2 emission per capita is defined as the contribution in CO2 emission of an average citizen of each country. It is calculated by dividing the country’s total emissions by its population. In bellow visualization, we can see the differences in per capita emissions worldwide.
The world’s largest per capita emissions CO2 emitters are the major oil-producing countries, as these countries mostly have relatively low populations. However, these countries have relatively low total annual emissions. More populated countries with high per capita emissions have high total yearly emissions, such as the United States, Canada, and Australia. Most of the European countries have per capita emissions near the world average. Many countries in Africa, South Asia, and South America still have very low per capita CO2. The lowest per capita emission is detected in Sub-Saharan African countries.
If we look at the plot of CO2 emissions vs. time for rich countries such as the United States or Europe, we notice that it has been decreasing steadily in the recent year. It looks like a good sign in the fight against global warming on a surface level. On the other hand, though, emissions in countries like China and India are increasing. This raises the question of whether that is this steady decline in rich countries and growth in developing countries related to each other.
The answer is yes, as ‘rich’ countries indeed are ‘outsourcing’ their climate pollution to the developing countries by shifting their factories overseas. In the plot, we can notice a sharp increase in CO2 emissions of China since the year 2000. But a significant portion of these CO2 emissions is due to making goods for exporting. In other middle-income countries, such as India, we notice a more gradual rise in emissions.
China's and other emerging economies' factories now emit more carbon pollution than the United States and Europe industries. But the per capita emissions in these economies are still below America and Europe. China and India regularly cite this gap in per capita emissions at climate talks to deflect the pressure to cut emissions.
Outsourcing has made it challenging to hold countries accountable for their emissions. We can look at China and India and blame them, but at the same time, the pollution is caused due to goods that are being produced there for American demand.
China emits the highest amount of carbon dioxide, around 30 % of the global carbon dioxide emission followed by the US and India contributing 15 % and 7% respectively. Combined, these three countries account for over half the global emissions. Even though China is a huge contributor to carbon dioxide emissions, its per capita emissions stand at a modest 7.3 tonnes/person which is half of the US per capita emissions which stand at 15.9 tonnes/person per year.
The main sources of carbon emissions globally are coal, oil, and gas respectively. Emission due to the burning of coal is at a staggering 40%.
In India, as coal is the main source of power generation, the disparity is even higher. Emission from coal accounts for 64% followed by oil which stands at 25%. However, if we consider the US which is the highest oil producing country we get a very different distribution which is expected. Emissions due to oil account for 44% whereas gas and coal contribute to 32% and 21% emissions respectively.
CO2 emissions from energy and material production can arise from various sources and fuel types, such as coal, gas, cement production, and gas flaring. Here we have shown a break up of CO2 emissions from different sources in the world for 2019. As we can see most of the CO2 emission is from solid fuel, 40%.
There is also a very noticeable difference between developed countries and developing counties in terms of using solid and liquid fuel. We can see that most of India’s CO2 emission comes from solid fuel, whereas USA’s CO2 emission comes from liquid fuel. We can see a similar trend in different underdeveloped countries also. Although the world’s CO2 emission comes from solid fuel, which shows that there are more countries going through the development process. We can also notice differences in CO2 emissions from Gas sources, too.
CO2 emissions per unit of energy are annual production-based emissions of CO2, measured in kilograms per kilowatt-hour of primary production. It shows the efficient use of CO2, low being the most efficient system. With the advancement in technology, the CO2 emissions per unit of energy have shown a significant decrease, as we can see in the above visualization. We can also say that more advanced countries like the United States, the UK, and other countries, had significantly fewer emissions per energy than the UAE, Qatar, and Iraq. With more technological ideas shared over the world, most countries could reduce their emissions per energy. In recent times, most countries have had emissions per unit of energy between 0.1 to 0.4. India and Chain have been around 0.25 emissions per unit of energy, whereas UAE reduced it to about 0.1.
CO2 Emissions are always strongly correlated with how much money a country has, particularly for low-to-middle income countries. It is natural to believe that the richer we are, the more CO2 we emit because we are using more energy from fossil fuels.
This relationship no longer holds for high-income/developed countries. Many countries have managed to achieve economic growth while reducing emissions.
In the shown charts for developed countries like UK, Germany, and France, we see that their GDP has increased a lot over the last 30 years, while their emissions have decreased. However, in developing countries such as India and China, the decrease in co2 emissions is not visible.
There might be two key reasons why the emissions have fallen for the developed countries. Firstly, some countries might have managed to decouple energy use and economic growth, as the GDP has increased while total energy use has remained flat or fallen. Second and more important, these countries are replacing fossil fuels with low-carbon energy fuels and producing more energy without the emissions.
On the other hand, for the developing countries, one reason for the continuous rise in CO2 emissions of developing countries might be that they still have to continuously spend more energy developing their resources due to their high population. And, since they are low-income countries, it might be costly to switch to more environment-friendly resources.
Also, it’d be wrong to say that developed countries outsourced CO2 emissions to India and China. The chart shows that even consumption-based emission , which adjusts for emissions from imported and exported goods, has also fallen. So, although emissions are exported overseas, that is not the sole driver of the decline.
Goldenberg, Suzanne. “CO2 emissions are being 'outsourced' by rich countries to rising economies.” The Guardian, 19 January 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/19/ co2-emissions-outsourced-rich-nations-rising-economies. Accessed 6 April 2022.
Plumer, Brad. “How rich countries "outsource" their CO2 emissions to poorer ones.” Vox, 18 April 2017, https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/4/18/15331040/emissions-outsourcing-carbon-leakage . Accessed 6 April 2022.
Ritchie, Hannah. “Many countries have decoupled economic growth from CO₂ emissions, even if we take offshored production into account.” Our World in Data, 1 December 2021, https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling . Accessed 26 April 2022.
Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. “CO2 emissions.” Our World in Data, 2020, https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#citation . Accessed 6 April 2022.