Afghanistan's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
Afghanistan's CO2 emissions totalled around 18.9 megatonnes CO2e in 2024. Land-use was the largest source, at about 8.1 megatonnes CO2 (42.8%), followed by oil at 6.8 megatonnes CO2 (35.9%) and coal at 3.9 megatonnes CO2 (20.6%). Over the ten years to 2024, land-use rose by around 0.62 megatonnes CO2 per year, coal by 0.16 and oil by 0.06, while gas and other fossil emissions declined.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were very small from 1949, fluctuating below roughly 0.6 megatonnes CO2 through the 1980s before declining to around 0.1 in 2005. They then rose sharply to about 3.7 in 2011, dipped in the mid-2010s, and recovered to their peak of around 3.9 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions began at zero in 1949 and rose to around 2 megatonnes CO2 by the late 1980s. They then varied at lower levels, reaching a trough of about 0.7 in 2002, before surging to a peak of roughly 7.3 in 2011. Emissions fluctuated thereafter and ended at around 6.8 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions were negligible until around 1960, then rose unevenly and peaked at roughly 1.2 megatonnes CO2 in 1986. They fell sharply after that, with a smaller rebound reaching about 0.5 in 2002. Gas emissions then generally declined, ending at around 0.1 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions began at around 3.8 megatonnes CO2 in 1851 and rose to nearly 9 by 1914. They climbed sharply after 1949, peaking at roughly 18.3 megatonnes CO2 in 1959, before declining to around 2.9 in 1986. After falling below zero in 1993, they recovered to around 8.1 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions remained very small through the 1960s, then rose to around 0.3 megatonnes CO2 in 1970 and peaked at roughly 0.4 in 1977. They subsequently declined with intermittent fluctuations, ending at around 0.01 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Background
The chart shows a national breakdown by source of the yearly CO2 emissions from human activities and processes expressed in megatonnes. It is critical to know and track the sources of national CO2 emissions in order to understand their individual impacts on climate change.
The sources of human CO2 emissions are
- CO2 From Fossil Fuels and Industry: coal, oil, gas combustion, other fossil processes
- CO2 From Land-Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry
Coal, oil and gas combustion
Fossil fuel CO2 emissions from the combustion of coal, oil and gas are emitted by processes in electricity generation, transport, industry, and the building sector. All processes can be linked to human activities. Examples include driving cars with combustion engines burning diesel or gas, or electric cars charged by electricity from a power plant that burns coal.
Other fossil processes
Fossil CO2 emissions from other processes include sources like cement manufacturing and production of chemicals and fertilizers. Cement also has an absorption factor highlighted in the absorption breakdown chart.
Land-use change
Human civilization emits CO2 by changing and managing its land. Those emissions come, for example, from deforestation, logging, forest degradation, harvest activities and shifting agriculture cultivation. Land-use change also absorbs considerable amounts of CO2, which is shown in the absorption breakdown chart. Land-use change emits more than it absorbs, so the net effect is still emissions, but less than for coal, oil and gas.
Wikipedia: Greenhouse Gas EmissionsEarth System Science Data: GCP 2020 paper: Section 2.2 Land-use change; Section 2.1 Fossil fuel emissions
IPCC: Annual Report 6, 5.2.1.1 Anthropogenic CO2 emissions
Units and Measures
CO2 emissions are expressed in the total weight in megatonnes per year. 1 Megatonne is equal to 1 million tonnes.
Wikipedia: MegatonneWikipedia: Global warming potential
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National CO2 emissions data through 2024 is from the Global Carbon Project and covers fossil sources and land-use change.
The Key Insights paragraph was created using a large language model (LLM) in combination with our data, historic events, and a structured approach for best accuracy by separating the context generation from the interpretation and narrative.
Data Sources
Global Carbon Budget 2025 Global Carbon Budget
Update cycle: yearlyDelay: ~ 10 months after the end of the year. Current year values are estimated and published in November.Credits: Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Bakker, D. C. E., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Li, H., Luijkx, I. T., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Aas, K., Alin, S. R., Anthoni, P., Barbero, L., Bates, N. R., Bellouin, N., Benoit-Cattin, A., Berghoff, C. F., Bernardello, R., Bopp, L., Brasika, I. B. M., Chamberlain, M. A., Chandra, N., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Collier, N. O., Colligan, T. H., Cronin, M., Djeutchouang, L., Dou, X., Enright, M. P., Enyo, K., Erb, M., Evans, W., Feely, R. A., Feng, L., Ford, D. J., Foster, A., Fransner, F., Gasser, T., Gehlen, M., Gkritzalis, T., Goncalves De Souza, J., Grassi, G., Gregor, L., Gruber, N., Guenet, B., Gürses, Ö., Harrington, K., Harris, I., Heinke, J., Hurtt, G. C., Iida, Y., Ilyina, T., Ito, A., Jacobson, A. R., Jain, A. K., Jarníková, T., Jersild, A., Jiang, F., Jones, S. D., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Klein Goldewijk, K., Knauer, J., Kong, Y., Korsbakken, J. I., Koven, C., Kunimitsu, T., Lan, X., Liu, J., Liu, Z., Liu, Z., Lo Monaco, C., Ma, L., Marland, G., McGuire, P. C., McKinley, G. A., Melton, J., Monacci, N., Monier, E., Morgan, E. J., Munro, D. R., Müller, J. D., Nakaoka, S.-I., Nayagam, L. R., Niwa, Y., Nutzel, T., Olsen, A., Omar, A. M., Pan, N., Pandey, S., Pierrot, D., Qin, Z., Regnier, P. A. G., Rehder, G., Resplandy, L., Roobaert, A., Rosan, T. M., Rödenbeck, C., Schwinger, J., Skjelvan, I., Smallman, T. L., Spada, V., Sreeush, M. G., Sun, Q., Sutton, A. J., Sweeney, C., Swingedouw, D., Séférian, R., Takao, S., Tatebe, H., Tian, H., Tian, X., Tilbrook, B., Tsujino, H., Tubiello, F., van Ooijen, E., van der Werf, G., van de Velde, S. J., Walker, A., Wanninkhof, R., Yang, X., Yuan, W., Yue, X., and Zeng, J.: Global Carbon Budget 2025, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-659, in review, 2025.