CO2 Emissions per Capita: an Interactive Data Story from Our World in Data
This dataset divides each country’s annual fossil CO2 emissions by its population, giving the average emissions per person in tonnes. It is the fairest simple way to compare countries of very different sizes.
On this page the dataset is downloaded live from Our World in Data, straight into your browser, and turned into an interactive dashboard and a data story told as a scrolling article. Nothing is uploaded to a server and nothing needs installing.
Interactive dashboard and data story
At a glance
| Indicator | CO2 Emissions per Capita |
| Unit | t per person |
| Coverage | yearly values from 1900 to the latest release |
| Highlighted entities | World, United States, China, India, Germany |
| OWID chart id | co-emissions-per-capita |
| Column | emissions_total_per_capita |
| Story format | Scrolling article |
| Source | Our World in Data, CC BY 4.0 |
Why this dataset is told as a scrolling article
This dataset suits a scrolling article: colored stripes in the opening chart, who went up and who went down, and the map at the end.
A long-form article with a pinned opening chart, numbered chapters and charts that stay put while the text scrolls past. Datastripes can tell any dataset in eight formats: scrolling article, slide deck, conversation, newspaper front page, timeline, tap-through stories, quiz and bento grid. In automatic mode it picks one from the shape of the data. Here the format is fixed to the one that fits this indicator best. You can see every format side by side in the data story gallery.
Background
The world average is around 4.7 tonnes of CO2 per person per year, but the spread is enormous. Gulf states and the United States emit several times the average; many countries in sub-Saharan Africa emit less than a tenth of it.
Per-capita emissions in most rich countries peaked in the 1970s or 2000s and have fallen since. China’s rose fast in the 2000s and are now above the EU average, while India’s are still below two tonnes per person.
How the indicator is measured
Emissions come from the Global Carbon Budget and cover fossil fuels and cement. Population comes from the UN. Land-use change is excluded, and the figures are territorial: they count emissions where they are produced, not where goods are consumed.
What to look for in the data
- US emissions per person are now far below their peak but still more than three times the world average.
- Germany’s per-capita emissions have fallen by more than a third since reunification.
- China’s per-capita emissions overtook the world average in the mid-2000s.
- India’s rise is steady but slow; it remains well below the world average.
Limits and caveats
- An average per person hides big differences within countries between rich and poor households.
- Territorial accounting assigns emissions from exported goods to the producer; consumption-based figures shift some of China’s emissions to its customers.
- Small countries with oil refineries or heavy industry can look extreme on a per-person basis.
Who uses co2 emissions per capita data
- Climate educators
- ESG analysts
- Climate justice researchers
- Policy journalists
How to analyze this dataset yourself
- Open the data. Download the CSV from the Our World in Data chart and drop it into Datastripes. It loads in your browser, with no upload.
- Filter the entities. The file has one row per country and year. Filter the
entitycolumn to the countries or regions you care about, or usecode(for exampleowid_wrl) to pick out aggregates. - Pick a time window. Sort or filter on the time column to isolate a period, such as the years before and after a policy change.
- Join other indicators. Add a second OWID file, for example GDP or population, and join it on entity and year to look for relations.
- Forecast and simulate. Run a no-code forecast on any series, or build what-if scenarios on top of it.
- Publish a story. Turn your filtered table into a data story in any of the eight formats and embed it on your site with the Datastripes dashboard widget.
Related data stories
- CO2 Emissions: timeline
- Renewable Energy Share: slide deck
- Energy Consumption: conversation
- Monthly Temperature Anomalies: tap-through stories
- All data stories in the gallery
Frequently asked questions
Why look at emissions per person?
Totals favour small countries. Per-person figures compare lifestyles and economies on equal terms.
Which country has the highest emissions per capita?
Small oil and gas producers such as Qatar usually top the list. Among large countries, Australia, the US, Canada and Saudi Arabia rank high.
Does this include flights and imports?
International aviation and shipping are not assigned to countries, and imports are counted where they are made.
Data: Our World in Data, published under CC BY 4.0, downloaded in your browser when you open this page. Datastripes is not affiliated with Our World in Data. Visualisations are generated automatically and may lag behind the latest OWID release by a few days.