Colombia's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
In 2024, Colombia's emissions across these sources totalled around 134 megatonnes CO2e. Oil was the largest source, at about 42 megatonnes CO2 (31.5%), closely followed by land-use at around 41 megatonnes CO2 (30.6%). Gas contributed 23 megatonnes CO2 (17.2%) and coal 22 megatonnes CO2 (16.7%), while Other Fossil added 5.2 megatonnes CO2 (3.9%). Over the ten years to 2024, land-use fell sharply, coal rose, and oil, gas and Other Fossil edged down.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were negligible in the nineteenth century, but rose to around 1.1 megatonnes CO2 by 1939 and roughly 13.5 by 1994. They then declined to about 7.1 in 2004 before recovering. Coal peaked at roughly 23.8 megatonnes CO2 in 2019 and ended at around 22.3 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions began near zero in the early 1920s and rose from around 2.5 megatonnes CO2 in 1949 to roughly 35 in 1998. After a brief fall around 2000, they increased with substantial variation, reaching a peak of about 56.8 megatonnes CO2 in 2021. They ended at around 42.1 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions were near zero until the early twentieth century, rising to about 1.4 megatonnes CO2 in 1944 before falling back to zero by 1958. They then increased to around 22 megatonnes CO2 by 2013, peaking at roughly 24.4 in 2015. Gas emissions ended at about 23.0 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions began at around 35 megatonnes CO2 in the early 1850s and climbed sharply to roughly 362 by 1957, peaking at about 418 in 1959. They then fell to around 85 by 1976. Later emissions fluctuated widely, from a low near 4 in 2010 to almost 300 in 2012, ending at about 40.9 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other Fossil emissions began near zero in the early 1920s, reaching around 0.6 megatonnes CO2 by the mid-1950s and roughly 2.7 a decade later. They rose gradually thereafter, despite fluctuations, and peaked at about 6.5 megatonnes CO2 in 2012. Emissions then eased to around 5.2 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.