Japan's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
Japan's 2024 CO2 emissions totalled around 960 megatonnes CO2e. Coal was the largest source, at around 381 megatonnes CO2 and 39.7%, followed closely by oil at roughly 354 megatonnes CO2 and 36.8%. Gas contributed around 195 megatonnes CO2, or 20.3%, while other fossil sources added roughly 32 megatonnes CO2, or 3.3%; land-use was a small net sink of about 1.5 megatonnes CO2. Over the ten years to 2024, all fossil sources declined: coal by around 9 megatonnes CO2 per year, oil by 13, gas by 7, and other fossil sources by 1.1. Land-use emissions moved upward by about 1.3 megatonnes CO2 per year, indicating a smaller net sink.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were negligible in the late 1860s, then rose to around 148 megatonnes CO2 by 1943. They fell sharply to about 75 megatonnes CO2 in 1945, before climbing for decades to a peak of roughly 475 megatonnes CO2 in 2013. Emissions then declined to around 381 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were near zero until the mid-20th century, reaching around 13 megatonnes CO2 in 1952. They then rose rapidly, peaking at roughly 708 megatonnes CO2 in 1994. Oil emissions declined thereafter, falling from around 668 megatonnes CO2 in 1990 to about 354 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions remained close to zero through the 1950s, reaching only around 0.9 megatonnes CO2 in 1958. They rose strongly from the mid-1970s, peaking at roughly 258 megatonnes CO2 in 2014. After remaining elevated into the mid-2010s, gas emissions declined to around 195 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions began at around 12 megatonnes CO2 in the early 1850s and rose to a peak of roughly 73 megatonnes CO2 in 1959. They then fell steadily, becoming a net sink of around 12 megatonnes CO2 by 1990. The sink varied thereafter and was about 1.5 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions were small in the early record, first reaching around 1.9 megatonnes CO2 in 1928 and falling to roughly 0.5 in 1946. They grew from the mid-1950s to a peak of about 59 megatonnes CO2 in 1996, then declined to around 32 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.