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Estonia's Yearly Greenhouse Gas Emissions in CO₂ Equivalent

Name: Estonia's Yearly Greenhouse Gas Emissions in CO₂ Equivalent
Creator: Climate Change Tracker
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Key Insights

2024 Emissions Profile

In 2024, CO₂ was Estonia's largest source: around 9.1 megatonnes CO₂, or 73.9% of the national total. N₂O contributed around 1.7 megatonnes CO₂e (13.9%), methane 1.3 (10.6%), and F-gases 0.2 (1.6%). Over the ten years to 2024, CO₂, methane and F-gases fell by about 8.1%, 7.6% and 3.7% per year, respectively; N₂O was essentially unchanged. CO₂ dominated emissions, while N₂O and methane were secondary and F-gases small.

Historic Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) Emissions

CO₂ emissions fell from around 9 megatonnes CO₂ in 1851 to under 4 by the mid-1890s, then recovered unevenly to about 8 by 1952. They rose rapidly thereafter, peaking at roughly 38 in 1989, before declining markedly to around 9.1 megatonnes CO₂ in 2024.

Historic Methane (CH₄) Emissions

Methane emissions began at around 0.7 megatonnes CO₂e in 1851, rose slowly before accelerating after the 1940s, and peaked at roughly 3.8 in 1987. They then declined to around 1.3 megatonnes CO₂e in 2024. Methane's warming contribution since 1851 was around 7% lower than its emissions alone suggest, because methane's short atmospheric lifetime dampens the warming impact when CH₄ emissions are falling.

Historic Nitrous Oxide (N₂O) Emissions

Nitrous oxide emissions started near 0.17 megatonnes CO₂e in 1851 and increased gradually to around 0.7 by 1950. Growth then accelerated, reaching a peak of roughly 2.0 in 1987. After dropping to around 1.5 in the mid-1990s, emissions edged up to around 1.7 megatonnes CO₂e in 2024.

Historic Fluorinated Gases (F-gases) Emissions

F-gas emissions remained at zero until the late 1980s. They rose thereafter, peaking at roughly 0.28 megatonnes CO₂e in 2018, then fell back to around 0.2 megatonnes CO₂e in 2024.

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.

Carbon Dioxide (CO₂)
Methane (CH₄)
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

Crabon Dioxide (CO₂)

CO₂ includes emissions from fossil fuels and industry (FFI), and from land-use, land-use-change, and forestry (LULUCF).

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

National CO₂ emissions data through 2024 is from the Global Carbon Project and covers fossil sources and land-use change. Emissions data through 2024 for CH₄, N₂O and F-gases comes from the PRIMAP-hist dataset, which combines several published sources into historical emissions time series.

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.

PRIMAP-hist The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2024)
Update cycle: Every few monthsDelay: Less than 1 yearCredits: Gütschow, J.; Busch, D.; Pflüger, M. (2025): The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series v2.7 (1750-2024). zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.17090760

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