Ecuador's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
In 2024, Ecuador's CO2 emissions were dominated by oil at around 39.5 megatonnes CO2, equal to 106.7% of the national total after land-use removals. Oil rose by about 0.48 megatonnes CO2 per year over the ten years to 2024. Other fossil sources contributed around 5.3 megatonnes CO2 (14.3%) and increased, while gas contributed about 1.2 megatonnes CO2 (3.2%) and declined. Land-use was a net removal of roughly 8.9 megatonnes CO2, offsetting 24.1% of emissions; coal remained at zero.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were negligible throughout Ecuador's history. They appeared in the late nineteenth century, peaked at roughly 0.06 megatonnes CO2 in 1910, then declined unevenly through the 1910s and 1920s. Coal emissions had fallen to zero by 1960 and remained there through 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions began at about 0.03 megatonnes CO2 in 1917 and rose gradually to around 4 megatonnes by 1972. Growth accelerated through the 1970s and resumed strongly after 2000. After a dip to roughly 27.5 megatonnes in 2020, emissions recovered to their peak of about 39.5 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions were very small for much of the twentieth century, with intermittent early increases that returned to zero. They rose more consistently from the late 1980s, reaching a peak of roughly 1.7 megatonnes CO2 in 2016. Emissions then declined, despite a partial recovery, ending at around 1.2 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions were already around 5.6 megatonnes CO2 in the early 1850s and rose sharply in the early 1930s. They fluctuated at high levels for decades, peaking at roughly 99 megatonnes CO2 in 1960. Following another high around 1980, they declined over the long term and became a net removal of about 8.9 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions were near zero until the mid-1960s. They then increased steadily from around 0.2 megatonnes CO2 in 1966 to nearly 4.7 megatonnes in 2009. Emissions dipped to about 3.9 megatonnes in 2019 before recovering to their peak of roughly 5.3 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.