Global greenhouse gas emissions · compiled from Climate Watch / WRI · Global Carbon Project · Our World in Data
CARBON ATLAS
Data current as of August 2026 · Companion page: Nature Atlas
Where the world's planet-warming emissions come from, parsed down to the individual source — road transport, iron & steel, rice cultivation, landfills — with three decades of trend behind each sector.
START HERE
What is this page? It is a map of humanity's greenhouse gas emissions — the gases we release that trap heat in the atmosphere and warm the planet. The biggest one is carbon dioxide (CO₂), released when coal, oil and gas are burned; methane (from livestock, rice paddies, landfills and gas leaks) and nitrous oxide (mostly from fertilised soils) matter too. To compare them fairly, everything here is expressed in CO₂-equivalents (CO₂e) — each gas counted by how much warming it causes relative to CO₂.
The units: emissions are measured in gigatonnes (Gt) — one gigatonne is a billion tonnes. The world currently emits about 52 GtCO₂e per year. For scale: that is roughly 6.4 tonnes for every person on Earth, every year.
How to use it: the scoreboard below gives the planet's vital signs at a glance. Then three views break the problem down: an interactive wheel showing where every slice of emissions comes from, a 33-year history showing how each sector has grown, and a breakdown of which fuels are responsible. Hover and click everything — sources are listed at the bottom of the page.
The carbon scorecard. Before diving into the sources, here is the summary reading for this atlas's subject — the planet's carbon balance: how much headroom is left right now (state), which way it is moving (trend), and whether the damage is speeding up or slowing down (acceleration). The living world gets its own scorecard on the Nature Atlas.
Carbon state · atmosphere & budget
18 /100
Equal-weight roll-up of this atlas's 3 stock indicators — atmospheric CO₂ headroom, the remaining 1.5 °C budget, and warming headroom (100 = healthy reference). Leave-one-out range 11–24.
Net trend · direction of travel
▼ −1.3
Worsening — mean of ordinal classes from −2 (rapidly worsening) to +2 (improving). Of 4 trend inputs: 3 worsening · 1 rapidly worsening (the shrinking 1.5 °C budget). None flat or improving.
Acceleration · is it speeding up?
Emissions growth — deceleratingCO₂ still accumulating — +2.5 ppm/yr
Growth in fossil emissions has slowed markedly — +1.1%/yr now versus ~3%/yr in the 2000s — but emissions have not yet peaked, so the atmosphere keeps filling and the budget keeps shrinking, just slightly more slowly.
Method & components
State scores stocks only, each 0–100 against the stated reference below, equal-weighted — no defensible unequal weighting exists, so the weights are transparent instead. Trend classifies each input's current direction on an ordinal scale (−2 rapidly worsening · −1 worsening · 0 flat · +1 stabilizing · +2 improving), which avoids unit-choice artifacts; flows (the emission rate) inform trend, not state. Acceleration is reported qualitatively. The level is sensitive to reference choices (especially 450 ppm and the ~500 Gt budget); the trend column is robust to them. This is a summary lens over this atlas's sourced indicators — not a measurement.
Indicator
State
Reference (=100)
Trend
2nd derivative
Atmospheric CO₂ headroom
14
278 ppm; 0 at 450 ppm
▼ worsening
steady rise (+2.5 ppm/yr)
1.5 °C carbon budget left
34
~500 Gt (from 2020)
▼▼ rapidly worsening
~4 years at current rate
Warming headroom
7
1.5 °C limit (now ~1.4 °C)
▼ worsening
steady
Fossil emissions (flow → trend only)
—
—
▼ rising +1.1%/yr
growth decelerating (was ~3%/yr in 2000s)
The living world's scorecard — wildlife, forests, oceans and protection — lives on the companion Nature Atlas.
Total GHG · 2023
52.0 GtCO₂e
Everything humanity emitted in a year — all gases, including land use · Climate Watch
Fossil CO₂ · 2025
38.1 GtCO₂
▲ 1.1% vs 2024 — an all-time record · Global Carbon Project
CO₂ in the air · 2025
425.7 ppm
Parts per million — 52% above the pre-industrial level of 278
Remaining 1.5 °C budget
~170 GtCO₂
CO₂ the world can still emit with a coin-flip chance of staying under 1.5 °C — about 4 years at today's pace
WHERE EMISSIONS COME FROM
Almost three-quarters of global emissions come from energy — making electricity and heat, moving people and goods, running factories and heating buildings. The rest comes from farming and land clearing, from industrial chemistry (making cement releases CO₂ from the rock itself, not just the fuel), and from our waste. This is the most detailed consistent global decomposition available — Climate Watch & WRI (2016 reference year, ~49.4 GtCO₂e), the same breakdown used by Our World in Data.
HOW TO READThe wheel works like nested pie charts: the inner ring splits all emissions into four big sectors, and each outer ring splits its parent into finer pieces — so "Road transport" sits inside "Transport", which sits inside "Energy". Click any wedge to zoom in on that sector; click the centre to zoom back out. Hover for exact numbers. The list on the right shows the same data as an expandable table — percentages are shares of all global greenhouse gas emissions.
Showing all sectors — click a wedge to zoom
THREE DECADES OF TRENDS
Global emissions by sector, 1990–2023, in GtCO₂e. Total emissions have grown by more than 50% since 1990 — but not evenly: electricity and transport have surged while some sectors have plateaued. One quirk to know: land-use change (deforestation minus forest regrowth) flips between adding carbon and absorbing it, so its band sits at the base of the stack and can dip below zero in good years.
HOW TO READEach coloured band is one sector. The thickness of a band in any year is that sector's emissions; the top of the whole stack is the world total. Hover anywhere for exact values in that year; click a legend entry to isolate a single sector (click again to restore). A full data table is below the chart.
View as data table
WHICH FUELS ARE BURNING
Of the 38.1 GtCO₂ of fossil emissions projected for 2025, coal is still the single largest source, followed by oil and natural gas. "Cement" is CO₂ released by the chemical reaction that turns limestone into cement — separate from any fuel burned. None of the three fuels declined in 2025: coal grew +0.8%, oil +1.0%, gas +1.3% · Global Carbon Budget 2025.
Any gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. The big three: carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O).
CO₂e (CO₂-equivalent)
A common currency for comparing gases. A tonne of methane warms the planet far more than a tonne of CO₂ over a century, so it is counted as multiple "tonnes of CO₂-equivalent" (using 100-year global-warming potentials).
Gigatonne (Gt)
One billion tonnes. Humanity emits ~52 GtCO₂e per year — about 100,000 tonnes every minute.
ppm (parts per million)
How CO₂ concentration in the air is measured. For every million air molecules, ~426 are now CO₂ — up from 278 before the industrial era.
Carbon budget
The total CO₂ the world can still emit while keeping a ~50% chance of limiting warming to a target (here 1.5 °C). It shrinks every year we keep emitting.
Fossil CO₂ vs total GHG
"Fossil CO₂" (38.1 Gt) counts only CO₂ from fossil fuels and cement. "Total GHG" (52 Gt) adds methane, nitrous oxide, F-gases and land-use change.
Fugitive emissions
Gas that escapes rather than being burned — leaks from wells, pipelines and coal mines. Nearly 6% of the global total.
Land-use change (LUCF)
Emissions from clearing forests and draining soils, minus the carbon absorbed where forests regrow. The most uncertain number in the ledger — and the only one that can go negative.
1.5 °C / 2 °C
The warming limits in the Paris Agreement, measured against pre-industrial temperature. The world is already at roughly +1.4 °C.
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
This site is compiled by an independent management consultant, formerly of Deloitte's sustainability practice, with an MBA in Corporate Sustainability and a graduate certificate in Carbon Management, previously in conservation with the Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game and a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. The Carbon and Nature atlases put the headline numbers about the planet in one place, at full detail, with sources listed for each chart. The data comes from the organisations listed below. Corrections and suggestions welcome — more on the About page.