Argentina's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
Argentina's CO2 emissions totalled around 251 megatonnes CO2e in 2024. Gas was the largest source, at about 89 megatonnes CO2 (35.6%), followed by land-use at roughly 80 megatonnes CO2 (31.7%) and oil at around 72 megatonnes CO2 (28.9%). Over the ten years to 2024, gas and oil each fell by about 0.9 megatonnes CO2 per year, while land-use rose by around 2.4. Coal was 3.2 megatonnes CO2 (1.3%) and declining; other fossil sources were 6.3 megatonnes CO2 (2.5%) and increasing.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were very small through the nineteenth century, then rose to a historic peak of roughly 9 megatonnes CO2 in 1913. They fell sharply around the early 1940s and subsequently fluctuated at comparatively low levels, including a high near 6 megatonnes in 1948. Coal emissions ended at around 3.2 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were negligible until the early twentieth century, then increased rapidly after 1945, rising from about 10 megatonnes CO2 to roughly 73 megatonnes CO2 by 1977. After a decline into the early 1990s, emissions climbed again, peaking at about 90 megatonnes CO2 in 2010. They declined thereafter to around 72 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions remained low until the late 1950s, when they were around 1.5 megatonnes CO2. They then rose strongly, reaching about 20 megatonnes CO2 by 1981 and roughly 95 by 2012. Emissions peaked at around 96 megatonnes CO2 in 2017 before easing, ending at about 89 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions rose from about 13 megatonnes CO2 in the early 1850s to roughly 176 megatonnes CO2 by 1927, before falling sharply during the following decades. They varied at lower levels through the mid-1980s, then increased unevenly and peaked at around 210 megatonnes CO2 in 2009. Land-use emissions ended at about 80 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions began at low levels in the early twentieth century and rose to a peak of roughly 10 megatonnes CO2 in 1979. They then declined to around 3.2 megatonnes CO2 by 2002, before recovering unevenly. After reaching about 7.5 megatonnes CO2 in 2022, they ended at around 6.3 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.