Estonia's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
In 2024, Estonia's CO2 emissions totalled around 9.1 megatonnes CO2e. Coal was the largest source at about 4.5 megatonnes CO2, or 50.1%, followed by oil at 3.1 megatonnes CO2, or 33.8%. Gas contributed 0.6 megatonnes CO2, land-use 0.8 megatonnes CO2, and other fossil sources 0.06 megatonnes CO2. Over the ten years to 2024, all fossil sources declined, led by coal, while land-use emissions increased.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were very low through the nineteenth century, despite a brief rise to about 4.4 megatonnes CO2 in 1940. They then rose strongly from around 1.8 megatonnes CO2 in 1942 to a peak of roughly 26 megatonnes CO2 in 1989. Emissions subsequently declined to about 4.5 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were negligible until the mid-twentieth century, then rose rapidly from under 1 megatonne CO2 in 1953 to a peak of around 11 megatonnes CO2 in 1983. They fell sharply to roughly 3.5 megatonnes CO2 by 1995 and remained near that level, ending at about 3.1 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions remained close to zero until around 1960, then increased to about 2 megatonnes CO2 by 1989. They reached a high of roughly 2.8 megatonnes CO2 in 1991 before declining overall, with some variation. Gas emissions ended at around 0.6 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions began high, peaking at roughly 9.2 megatonnes CO2 in 1859, then declined for more than a century. They became a net removal by the mid-1950s and fell to around minus 4.9 megatonnes CO2 in 2001. Emissions then rose, becoming positive and reaching about 0.8 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions were near zero until the mid-twentieth century, rising to around 0.5 megatonnes CO2 by 1980. They peaked at roughly 0.7 megatonnes CO2 in 1989, then declined steadily. By 2024, other fossil emissions were about 0.06 megatonnes CO2.
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.