Chile's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
Chile's CO2 emissions totalled around 78.5 megatonnes CO2e in 2024. Oil dominated, at roughly 54.4 megatonnes CO2 or 69.4% of national emissions, rising by about 1.0 megatonnes CO2 per year over the ten years to 2024. Gas also rose, while coal declined sharply. Land-use emissions became a small net removal, and other fossil emissions remained minor.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions began at around 0.1 megatonnes CO2 in the 1850s and fluctuated at low levels for more than a century, reaching roughly 6.7 megatonnes CO2 in 1912. They rose more strongly after the mid-1980s, peaking at about 31 megatonnes CO2 in 2019, before falling to around 10.9 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were near zero until the years after 1945, then rose to roughly 16 megatonnes CO2 by 1972. After a modest decline during the 1970s and early 1980s, emissions climbed persistently from the mid-1980s. They reached their record high of around 54.4 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions remained negligible into the mid-20th century, rising gradually to around 2.7 megatonnes CO2 by 1996 before accelerating to nearly 12 megatonnes CO2 in 2000. They peaked at roughly 16 megatonnes CO2 in 2004, fell to about 4.8 in 2008, and recovered to around 12.6 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions began at roughly 6.4 megatonnes CO2 in the 1850s and rose over much of the following century, peaking at around 42.4 megatonnes CO2 in 1975. They then fell rapidly to about 10.8 megatonnes CO2 by 1983. After fluctuating and reaching roughly 23 megatonnes CO2 in 2008, they fell to a net removal of around 0.3 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions were around 0.1 megatonnes CO2 in the late 1920s and rose to roughly 5.2 megatonnes CO2 in 1973. They then declined sharply to about 1.1 megatonnes CO2 by 1985, briefly recovered to nearly 1.8 in the late 1990s, and fell to around 0.9 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.