Ghana's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
Ghana's CO2 emissions totalled around 25.7 megatonnes CO2e in 2024. Oil was the largest source, at about 12.5 megatonnes CO2 or 48.8% of emissions, followed by gas at roughly 7.7 megatonnes CO2 (29.9%) and land-use at around 4.7 megatonnes CO2 (18.2%). Other fossil sources contributed about 0.8 megatonnes CO2, or 3.1%. Over the ten years to 2024, oil, gas and other fossil emissions rose, while land-use emissions declined sharply.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were small, at roughly 0.2 megatonnes CO2 in 1950, and peaked at about 0.34 megatonnes CO2 in 1951. They then declined through the 1950s and 1960s, with only minor fluctuations thereafter. Coal emissions had fallen to around 0.007 megatonnes CO2 by 1997.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions began at around 0.5 megatonnes CO2 in 1950 and rose gradually through the late twentieth century, reaching roughly 3.1 megatonnes CO2 in 1989. Growth accelerated after 2005, before emissions fluctuated around 10-13 megatonnes CO2 after 2014. They peaked at about 12.8 megatonnes CO2 in 2021 and ended at around 12.5 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions were negligible until the late 2000s, reaching only around 0.01 megatonnes CO2 in 2009. They rose quickly to about 2.4 megatonnes CO2 by 2017, then accelerated to roughly 6.6 megatonnes CO2 in 2021. Gas emissions continued increasing and reached their peak of around 7.7 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions rose from roughly 1.2 megatonnes CO2 in the early 1850s to around 45.8 megatonnes CO2 at their 1959 peak. They then fell sharply to about 18.1 megatonnes CO2 in 1961, while later decades were highly variable, including a rise to roughly 41.5 megatonnes CO2 in 1996. Emissions ended at around 4.7 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions were close to zero for most of the period before the 2010s. They rose from around 0.09 megatonnes CO2 in 2012 to a peak of roughly 1.2 megatonnes CO2 in 2021, before falling back somewhat. They ended at about 0.8 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
No funding, no reach
10,000 people are using Climate Change Tracker for free every month. A tiny monthly donation keeps us going!
Cancel anytime. Payments processed by Stripe.com. You can manage, upgrade, cancel, and download receipts in our self service portal on Stripe. Using Stripe you agree to Stripe's Privacy Policy.
More ways to donate
via PayPal
via DonorboxAbout the Data
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.