Barbados' Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
In 2024, Barbados's CO2 emissions across these sources totalled around 1.34 megatonnes CO2e. Oil dominated, at about 1.22 megatonnes CO2, or 91.6% of emissions, declining by around 0.011 megatonnes CO2 per year over the ten years to 2024. Other Fossil contributed 0.11 megatonnes CO2 (7.9%) and rose slightly, while gas supplied 0.04 megatonnes CO2 (2.8%) and edged down. Land-use was a net sink of 0.03 megatonnes CO2, offsetting 2.2% of emissions, although that sink weakened over the ten years to 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were very small through the first half of the twentieth century, then rose from near zero after 1947 to around 0.2 megatonnes CO2 by 1961. They continued increasing to roughly 1.3 megatonnes CO2 by 2006, before peaking at about 1.6 megatonnes CO2 in 2008. Emissions then generally declined, reaching around 1.22 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions remained negligible until the late 1970s, then increased to a peak of roughly 0.06 megatonnes CO2 in 1989. They fell to around 0.04 megatonnes CO2 in the early 1990s and thereafter varied within a narrow range, including a dip to about 0.03 megatonnes CO2 in 2021. Gas emissions ended at around 0.04 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use was a small net emissions source through the early twentieth century and rose to its historic peak of roughly 0.08 megatonnes CO2 in 1951. It then declined gradually, becoming a net CO2 sink around 2010. The sink deepened to about 0.06 megatonnes CO2 in 2015, before becoming less negative; land-use absorbed around 0.03 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions were near zero until the late 1970s, then climbed to around 0.16 megatonnes CO2 by the early 2000s. They peaked at roughly 0.16 megatonnes CO2 in 2005, then generally declined, reaching a low of about 0.07 megatonnes CO2 in 2016 before partly recovering. Emissions ended at around 0.11 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.