Five measures across 187 countries, from 1960 to 2024.
Source: Global Carbon Budget and Climate Watch, via Our World in Data. Production-based emissions count what is emitted inside a country's borders; consumption-based emissions reassign those of imported goods to the country that buys them, and subtract the emissions of exports. The difference matters: several wealthy economies have reduced territorial emissions partly by importing what they once manufactured. Consumption-based figures require trade-flow modelling and exist for 120 countries only, to 2023. Greenhouse gas totals include methane, nitrous oxide and land use change alongside CO2, expressed in CO2 equivalents.
Production-based accounting counts what is emitted inside a country’s borders. It is the basis of the Paris Agreement, national inventories, and almost every emissions target you will read about.
Consumption-based accounting asks a different question: who are these emissions for? It adds the emissions embodied in imported goods and subtracts those embodied in exports.
The two diverge sharply for trading economies. A country that closes its steel mills and imports steel instead reduces its territorial emissions without reducing the emissions caused by its consumption. That is not necessarily bad faith — but a target measured one way and a reality measured the other are different things.
The hover panel shows both, and flags where they differ by more than four per cent in either direction. Net importers of emissions are consuming more carbon than they produce; net exporters the reverse.
Consumption-based figures require modelling global trade flows, which is why they cover 120 countries rather than 187, and end a year earlier.
These two views answer different questions and support different arguments, which is why both are here.
Total emissions identify where the mitigation has to happen. A handful of large economies account for most of the global total, and no arrangement that excludes them can work arithmetically.
Per-person emissions identify responsibility. A country of one billion emitting twice as much as a country of fifty million is not behaving twice as badly — it has twenty times the people.
Both framings are used selectively in international negotiation, and each is accurate. Switching between the views on this map makes the selection visible.
Carbon dioxide accounts for roughly three quarters of warming, not all of it. Methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases make up the rest, and methane in particular has a far stronger short-term effect per tonne.
The greenhouse gas views combine all of them in carbon dioxide equivalents, and include emissions from land use change — deforestation, drainage of peatlands, agricultural soils.
This matters for how countries rank. Agricultural economies with modest fossil fuel use can have substantial greenhouse gas emissions from livestock methane and land conversion. Switching from the CO2 view to the greenhouse gas view moves several countries considerably.
The conversion to CO2 equivalents uses 100-year global warming potentials, which understates methane’s near-term effect. That choice is conventional rather than neutral.
Related work:
Data from the Global Carbon Budget and Climate Watch, via Our World in Data.