Kazakhstan's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
Kazakhstan's CO2 emissions totalled about 305 megatonnes CO2e in 2024. Coal was largest at around 160 megatonnes CO2, or 52.5% of national emissions, followed by oil at about 69 megatonnes CO2 (22.7%) and gas at roughly 38 megatonnes CO2 (12.4%). Other Fossil and Land-use each contributed about 20 megatonnes CO2. Over the ten years to 2024, coal, gas, land-use and other fossil emissions declined, while oil rose by around 3.5 megatonnes CO2 per year.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions began at around 0.02 megatonnes CO2 in 1855 and rose to about 13 megatonnes CO2 by 1943. They then climbed rapidly to roughly 139 megatonnes CO2 in 1976, peaking at about 195 megatonnes CO2 in 1988. After falling to around 82 megatonnes CO2 in 1999, they recovered to about 160 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were near zero in the mid-1850s and reached about 5 megatonnes CO2 by 1952. They grew strongly through the following three decades, peaking at roughly 68 megatonnes CO2 in 1983, before falling to around 28 megatonnes CO2 in 1996. Oil emissions then recovered, reaching a new high of about 69 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions were negligible until the mid-1960s, when they reached roughly 3.5 megatonnes CO2. They rose over the following decades and peaked at around 69 megatonnes CO2 in 2018, before declining. Gas emissions ended at about 38 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions began at roughly 33 megatonnes CO2 in 1851 and rose to about 45 megatonnes CO2 by 1929, before falling into net removals by 1939. They then surged to a peak of around 253 megatonnes CO2 in 1959, before declining to net removals of roughly 55 megatonnes CO2 in 2001. They ended at about 18 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other Fossil emissions were negligible through the first half of the record and remained small until the late 1980s, when they reached around 2.6 megatonnes CO2. They then increased substantially, peaking at roughly 23 megatonnes CO2 in 2015, before easing to about 20 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.