Venezuela's Yearly Greenhouse Gas Emissions in CO₂ Equivalent

✨ Key Insights

Oil Discovery and Early Emissions

The discovery of oil in Venezuela's Maracaibo Basin in 1914 marked a pivotal moment in the country's emissions history. This event initiated a significant increase in CO₂ emissions as oil extraction and combustion activities ramped up. The subsequent decades saw a steady rise in emissions, particularly from fossil fuels, as the country developed its oil infrastructure and expanded its production capabilities.

OPEC and Nationalization Impact

Venezuela's role as a founding member of OPEC in 1960 and the nationalization of its oil industry in 1976 further accelerated emissions growth. These strategic moves bolstered oil production and exports, leading to increased CO₂ emissions. The establishment of PDVSA, the state oil company, marked a period of intensified oil activity, contributing to a sustained rise in emissions as the country sought to maximize its oil output.

Economic Reforms and Fluctuations

The economic reforms of 1989, known as the 'Oil Opening,' attracted foreign investment and spurred further oil exploration, resulting in higher emissions. However, the 2002 PDVSA strike temporarily disrupted production, leading to a notable decrease in emissions. The global oil price collapse in 2014 and subsequent U.S. sanctions in 2019 further impacted Venezuela's oil sector, causing fluctuations in emissions as production levels varied in response to these external pressures.

Background

Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main drivers of human-induced warming. In the scientific literature, human-induced emissions are often referred to as anthropogenic emissions.

CO₂ Fossil Fuels and Industry (CO₂ FFI)
CO₂ Land-Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (CO₂ LULUCF)
Methane (CH₄)
Moderate: above 2.5 tonnes
Nitrous oxide (N₂O)
Fluorinated gases (F-gases)

Emissions from all different gases are expressed in CO₂-equivalent units to make it possible to compare the relative emissions from these different gases. CO₂-equivalents are calculated using the global warming potentials of the respective gases, in this case using a 100-year time horizon.

Wikipedia: Global Warming Potential

Total Historic Share

CO₂ From Fossil Fuels and Industry

The sources are mostly fossil-fuel combustion emissions from coal, oil, and gas, as well as emissions from industrial processes such as cement production. Cement also absorbs CO₂ out of the atmosphere through carbonation, which reduces emissions by about 0.8 Gt per year and is included here.

CO₂ From Land-Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry

The main driver of these emissions is deforestation, which includes logging and forest degradation, as well as other land-use change activities. The emissions also take into account the absorption of CO₂ by processes that remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, such as afforestation and reforestation. It is the net effect that is indicated here.

Methane (CH₄)

Methane emissions are caused by human activities such as rearing livestock, agricultural practices, and fugitive fossil fuel emissions.

Nitrous Oxide (N₂O)

Common sources of these emissions are fossil fuel emissions and the agricultural use of synthetic fertilizer and manure.

Fluorinated Gases (F-gases)

Fluorinated gases are a group of gases defined by UNFCCC: hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3). Fluorinated gases are also known as halogenated gases.

Wikipedia: Greenhouse Gas Emissions
IPCC: Annual Report 6, 5.2.1 5.2 Historical Trends, Variability and Budgets of CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O

Units and Measures

CO₂-equivalent emissions are expressed in the total weight in megatonnes per year. 1 Megatonne is equal to 1 million tonnes.

Wikipedia: Megatonne
Wikipedia: Global warming potential

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About the Data

The last available year in all the emission datasets is 2023. CO₂ emissions data is from the Global Carbon Project. It contains national CO₂ emissions from fossil sources and land-use change. Emissions from CH₄, N₂O and F-gases come from the PRIMAP-Hist dataset. It is a rich dataset that combines several published sources to create a historical emissions time series for various greenhouse gases.

The Key Insights paragraph was generated using a large language model (LLM) using a structured approach to improve the accuracy. This included separating the context generation from the interpretation and narrative.

Data Sources

Global Carbon Budget 2024 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 et al., 2024, ESSD. Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Li, H., Luijkx, I. T., Olsen, A., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Jackson, R. B., Alin, S. R., Arneth, A., Arora, V., Bates, N. R., Becker, M., Bellouin, N., Berghoff, C. F., Bittig, H. C., Bopp, L., Cadule, P., Campbell, K., Chamberlain, M. A., Chandra, N., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Colligan, T., Decayeux, J., Djeutchouang, L., Dou, X., Duran Rojas, C., Enyo, K., Evans, W., Fay, A., Feely, R. A., Ford, D. J., Foster, A., Gasser, T., Gehlen, M., Gkritzalis, T., Grassi, G., Gregor, L., Gruber, N., Gürses, Ö., Harris, I., Hefner, M., Heinke, J., Hurtt, G. C., Iida, Y., Ilyina, T., Jacobson, A. R., Jain, A., Jarníková, T., Jersild, A., Jiang, F., Jin, Z., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Klein Goldewijk, K., Knauer, J., Korsbakken, J. I., Lauvset, S. K., Lefèvre, N., Liu, Z., Liu, J., Ma, L., Maksyutov, S., Marland, G., Mayot, N., McGuire, P., Metzl, N., Monacci, N. M., Morgan, E. J., Nakaoka, S.-I., Neill, C., Niwa, Y., Nützel, T., Olivier, L., Ono, T., Palmer, P. I., Pierrot, D., Qin, Z., Resplandy, L., Roobaert, A., Rosan, T. M., Rödenbeck, C., Schwinger, J., Smallman, T. L., Smith, S., Sospedra-Alfonso, R., Steinhoff, T., Sun, Q., Sutton, A. J., Séférian, R., Takao, S., Tatebe, H., Tian, H., Tilbrook, B., Torres, O., Tourigny, E., Tsujino, H., Tubiello, F., van der Werf, G., Wanninkhof, R., Wang, X., Yang, D., Yang, X., Yu, Z., Yuan, W., Yue, X., Zaehle, S., Zeng, N., and Zeng, J.: Global Carbon Budget 2024, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-519, in review, 2024.

PRIMAP-hist The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023)
Update cycle: Every few monthsDelay: Less than 1 yearCredits: Gütschow, Johannes; Busch, Daniel; Pflüger, Mika (2024): The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023) v2.6. Zenodo.