Hungary's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
In 2024, Hungary's emissions across these sources totalled around 32.6 megatonnes CO2e. Oil was the largest source, at about 18.6 megatonnes CO2 and 57.2% of the total, rising by around 0.23 megatonnes CO2 per year over the ten years to 2024. Gas contributed 16.8 megatonnes CO2, or 51.6%, while coal added 3.6 megatonnes CO2, or 11.1%; both declined. Land-use was a net sink of roughly 7.4 megatonnes CO2, offsetting 22.8% of emissions, and other fossil sources were 1.0 megatonnes CO2. Oil and gas dominated Hungary's fossil emissions, partly offset by land-use removals.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions began below 0.3 megatonnes CO2 in the early 1850s and rose gradually before accelerating after 1947. They peaked at roughly 48 megatonnes CO2 in 1964, then declined persistently from the mid-1960s. The fall continued after 2004, reaching around 3.6 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were negligible through the early twentieth century, but grew from under 1 megatonne CO2 in the late 1930s to nearly 32 megatonnes by the late 1970s. They peaked at roughly 33 megatonnes CO2 in 1984, then declined unevenly, with a low around 14 megatonnes in 2013. They reached about 18.6 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions remained close to zero until the late 1950s, then increased strongly to around 23 megatonnes CO2 by 1999. They rose further to a peak of roughly 28 megatonnes CO2 in 2005 before declining overall. Gas emissions ended at around 16.8 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use was a net emissions source of around 8 megatonnes CO2 in the nineteenth century and peaked at roughly 8.2 megatonnes CO2 in 1900. Emissions then declined over the following decades, becoming net removals after the mid-twentieth century. The sink strengthened after the late 1990s, reaching around minus 7.4 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions were small through the first half of the twentieth century, then rose from around 0.1 megatonnes CO2 in 1948 to roughly 2.5 megatonnes by 1977. They peaked at about 3.6 megatonnes CO2 in 1990, before declining overall to around 1.0 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.