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GHG Emissions

References to GHG emission statistics throughout this site come from Climate Watch.

Climate Watch provides raw data for "GHG Emissions from Fuel Combustion" that is adapted from IEA data. Climate Watch have chosen not to reallocate fuel combustion data into end-use sectors - as a consequence the energy sector accounts for approximately 75% of emissions.

The Transition Element Framework has opted to reallocate fuel combustion to the relevant sectors using data available from World Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 2020, a Sankey diagram created by World Resources Institute. This data source visualises the allocation of fuel combustion to end-use sectors and sub-sectors that closely match the TEF hierarchy.

Method

The total GHG emission estimate used by this website has been taken directly from Climate Watch data using the following filter:

  • Data Source: "Climate Watch"
  • Location: "WORLD"
  • Year: 2020
  • Sector: "Total including LUCF"

This gave total emissions as 47,463 MtCO₂-eq.

2020 was chosen as the year in order to align with the Sankey diagram data. We were unable to find source data or a method description for the diagram and instead elected to use the raw percentage data used for rendering the diagram. Method descriptions for both Climate Watch Data (Ge and Friedrich 2024)1 and the first version of World Resources Institutes sankey allocation (Herzog, Pershing, and Baumert 2005)2.

The Sankey diagram sub-sectors were mapped to our TEF hierarchy as follows:

  • Transport:
    • Air
    • Rail
    • Road
    • Ship
    • Other Transportation
    • Pipeline
  • Industry:
    • Cement
    • Chemical and petrochemical
    • Electric Power Systems
    • Electronics
    • Food and tobacco
    • Iron and steel
    • Machinery
    • Mining and quarrying
    • Non-ferrous metals
    • Non-metallic minerals
    • Other Industry
    • Paper, pulp and printing
    • Textile and leather
    • Transport equipment
  • AFOLU
    • Agriculture & Fishing Energy Use"
    • Agriculture Soils
    • Burning
    • Drained organic soils
    • Fires in organic soils
    • Forest Land
    • Forest fires
    • Livestock & Manure
    • Rice Cultivation
    • Wood and wood products
  • Buildings:
    • Commercial Buildings
    • Construction
    • Residential Buildings
  • Energy:
    • Flared
    • Production
    • Transmission and distribution
    • Unallocated Fuel Combustion
    • Vented
  • Waste:
    • Landfills
    • Other Waste
    • Wastewater

Emission estimates

Combining the total emission figure with percentage data gives total emissions for each TEF sector:

Sector MtCO₂-eq Proportion
Transport 7,499.18 15.80%
Industry 14,860.24 31.31%
AFOLU 8,220.15 17.32%
Buildings 8,870.39 18.69%
Energy 6,362.91 13.41%
Waste 1,651.72 3.48%
Total 47,463.17

In addition to GHG emissions measured in CO₂-eq the Sankey data provides a mapping to specific gasses also measured in MtCO₂-eq:

Sector CO₂ CH₄ N₂O F-Gases Total
Transport 7,309.8 43.19 146.19 0 7,499.18
Industry 13,324.33 21.36 292.37 1,222.18 14,860.24
AFOLU 2,106.89 3,667.00 2,446.25 0 8,220.15
Buildings 8,599.38 259.15 11.86 0 8,870.39
Energy 3,262.14 3,041.44 59.33 0 6,362.91
Waste 0 1506.48 145.24 0 1,651.72
Total 34,602.55 8,538.62 3,101.24 1,222.18 47,463.17

  1. Ge, Mengpin, and Johannes Friedrich. 2024. “Climate Watch Country Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data and Methodology,” January. https://doi.org/10.46830/writn.20.00105. ↩

  2. Herzog, Tim, Jonathan Pershing, and Kevin A. Baumert. 2005. Navigating the Numbers. https://www.wri.org/research/navigating-numbers. ↩