Kuwait's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
In 2024, Kuwait's emissions across these sources totalled around 130 megatonnes CO2e. Oil was the largest source, at roughly 72 megatonnes CO2 or 55.9%, followed closely by gas at around 54 megatonnes CO2, or 41.6%. Oil rose by about 1.4 megatonnes CO2 per year and gas by around 1.7 over the ten years to 2024. Other fossil emissions were about 2.6 megatonnes CO2 (2.0%) and declined, while coal contributed around 0.6 megatonnes CO2 (0.5%) and also fell. Land-use emissions were negligible and broadly stable.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were zero until around 2003, then rose from negligible levels. They reached a peak of roughly 0.8 megatonnes CO2 in 2015 before easing back. Coal emissions ended at around 0.6 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions began at roughly 2.5 megatonnes CO2 in 1946 and varied widely through the following decades, including a peak near 14 megatonnes CO2 in 1963. From the mid-1970s, they rose strongly to more than 60 megatonnes CO2 in the early 2010s, then fell to around 31 in 2021 before rebounding to a 2024 peak of roughly 72 megatonnes CO2.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions began from zero in the years after 1945 and fluctuated at lower levels, reaching roughly 17 megatonnes CO2 in 1989. They then rose from around 7.4 megatonnes CO2 in 1992 to about 24 in 2009, continuing upwards thereafter. Gas emissions peaked near 54 megatonnes CO2 in 2021 and ended at around 53.8 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions were very small throughout Kuwait's history. They were a slight net absorption through the 1950s, reaching around -0.02 megatonnes CO2 in 1959, before moving into small net emissions by the mid-1970s. They subsequently fluctuated close to zero, peaking near 0.01 megatonnes CO2 in 1991, and ended at around 0.005 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions were negligible until around 1960, then rose sharply and peaked at roughly 23 megatonnes CO2 in 1971. They fell to around 4.2 megatonnes CO2 by 1980 and remained much lower thereafter, varying between roughly 0.2 and 4.2 megatonnes CO2. They ended at around 2.6 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.