Lithuania's Historic Contribution to Global Warming Since 1850
Key Insights
Significant Historic Warming Impact
Lithuania's historic greenhouse gas emissions have contributed significantly to global warming, with a total impact of 3,694.66 megatonnes of CO2-equivalents since 1851. This accounts for 0.1% of the global historic total, reflecting Lithuania's role in the broader context of global emissions. The country's per capita emissions are rated as "very high," averaging 8.16 tonnes per person per year. This high per capita impact underscores Lithuania's substantial contribution to historic warming, particularly when considering its relatively small population.
Agricultural and Industrial Drivers
The evolution of Lithuania's emissions profile has been shaped by key historical events and economic shifts. The emancipation of serfs in 1861 and subsequent land reforms in 1918 led to increased agricultural activity, contributing to CO2 and CH4 emissions. The Soviet occupation in 1940 marked a period of industrialization and agricultural collectivization, further increasing emissions. The intensification of agriculture in the 1960s, with increased fertilizer use and mechanization, resulted in higher N2O emissions. Additionally, the expansion of the chemical industry in the 1970s contributed to both CO2 and N2O emissions, reflecting the growth of industrial activities.
Economic Restructuring and Energy Transitions
Lithuania's emissions trajectory has also been influenced by significant economic and energy transitions. The restoration of independence in 1990 led to economic restructuring, resulting in a decline in industrial output and energy consumption, which likely reduced CO2 emissions. However, the closure of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in 2009 increased reliance on fossil fuels, temporarily raising emissions. More recently, Lithuania's accession to the European Union in 2004 and the launch of the Klaipėda LNG terminal in 2014 have facilitated a shift towards cleaner energy sources, contributing to a reduction in emissions. These transitions highlight Lithuania's ongoing efforts to balance economic development with environmental sustainability.
Background
Historic Per Capita Emissions
Historic per capita emissions are a crucial long-period (since 1850), population-weighted (accounting for changing population size) indicator. It shows the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions of a nation per capita per year to the current warming.
The rating scale is:
- Extremely High: above 10 tonnes per capita per year
- Very High: above 7.5 tonnes
- High: above 5 tonnes
- Moderate: above 2.5 tonnes
- Low: above 0 tonnes
- Negative Emissions: under 0
Historically, we don't expect any nation to reach negative emissions. Current warming, or warming targets, like 1.5 °C and 1.7 °C are all based on the fact that there have been human-induced greenhouse gas emissions and there will be some more. It is clear, however, that some nations have had incredibly high historic contributions per capita.
Total Historic Impact
This is the total amount of CO2, CH4, N2O, and F-Gases emissions of a nation from 1850 till 2023 (last available year in the data) expressed in megatonnes of CO2-equivalents. The gases have different atmospheric lifetimes (decay) and warming effects, for this reason we use the GWP100 (100 year time horizon method) to calculate the global warming potential of N2O and F-Gases to express in CO2-equivalents. For CH4, which is a short-term gas, we use the GWP* method to express the historic impact in CO2-equivalents.
Wikipedia: Global Warming PotentialTotal Historic Share
This is a nation's total historic share of global emissions and its contribution to global warming. It is an indicator of historic responsibility. All nations share the responsibility to ensure that developing nations do not copy and repeat the behavior of nations with high historic greenhouse gas emissions, they should not buy into old unsustainable fossil-fuels-based technology, land-use, and infrastructure, rather foster a sustainable and cleaner development.
About the Data
The last available year in all the emission datasets is 2023. CO2 emissions data is from the Global Carbon Project. It contains national CO2 emissions from fossil sources and land-use change. Emissions from CH4, N2O and F-gases come from the PRIMAP-Hist dataset. It is a rich dataset that combines several published sources to create a historical emissions time series for various greenhouse gases. Population data are also from Global Carbon Project where available, however, for many nations it doesn't have historic population going back to 1850. Those historic gaps are filled with population data from Our World in Data.
The Key Insights paragraph was generated using a large language model (LLM) using a structured approach to improve the accuracy. This included separating the context generation from the interpretation and narrative.
Data Sources
Global Carbon Budget 2024 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 et al., 2024, ESSD. Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Li, H., Luijkx, I. T., Olsen, A., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Jackson, R. B., Alin, S. R., Arneth, A., Arora, V., Bates, N. R., Becker, M., Bellouin, N., Berghoff, C. F., Bittig, H. C., Bopp, L., Cadule, P., Campbell, K., Chamberlain, M. A., Chandra, N., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Colligan, T., Decayeux, J., Djeutchouang, L., Dou, X., Duran Rojas, C., Enyo, K., Evans, W., Fay, A., Feely, R. A., Ford, D. J., Foster, A., Gasser, T., Gehlen, M., Gkritzalis, T., Grassi, G., Gregor, L., Gruber, N., Gürses, Ö., Harris, I., Hefner, M., Heinke, J., Hurtt, G. C., Iida, Y., Ilyina, T., Jacobson, A. R., Jain, A., Jarníková, T., Jersild, A., Jiang, F., Jin, Z., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Klein Goldewijk, K., Knauer, J., Korsbakken, J. I., Lauvset, S. K., Lefèvre, N., Liu, Z., Liu, J., Ma, L., Maksyutov, S., Marland, G., Mayot, N., McGuire, P., Metzl, N., Monacci, N. M., Morgan, E. J., Nakaoka, S.-I., Neill, C., Niwa, Y., Nützel, T., Olivier, L., Ono, T., Palmer, P. I., Pierrot, D., Qin, Z., Resplandy, L., Roobaert, A., Rosan, T. M., Rödenbeck, C., Schwinger, J., Smallman, T. L., Smith, S., Sospedra-Alfonso, R., Steinhoff, T., Sun, Q., Sutton, A. J., Séférian, R., Takao, S., Tatebe, H., Tian, H., Tilbrook, B., Torres, O., Tourigny, E., Tsujino, H., Tubiello, F., van der Werf, G., Wanninkhof, R., Wang, X., Yang, D., Yang, X., Yu, Z., Yuan, W., Yue, X., Zaehle, S., Zeng, N., and Zeng, J.: Global Carbon Budget 2024, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-519, in review, 2024.
PRIMAP-hist The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023)
Update cycle: Every few monthsDelay: Less than 1 yearCredits: Gütschow, Johannes; Busch, Daniel; Pflüger, Mika (2024): The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023) v2.6. Zenodo.
Our World in Data Population - Our World in Data
Update cycle: YearlyDelay: 7 monthsCredits: HYDE (2023); Gapminder (2022); UN WPP (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data