Malaysia's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
Malaysia's CO2 emissions totalled around 352 megatonnes CO2e in 2024. Coal was the largest source, at about 98 megatonnes CO2 (27.8%), narrowly ahead of gas at roughly 95 megatonnes CO2 (27.1%); both rose by about 3 megatonnes CO2 per year over the ten years to 2024. Oil contributed around 79 megatonnes CO2 (22.5%) and declined slightly, while land-use emissions fell sharply to about 61 megatonnes CO2 (17.4%). Other Fossil emissions were about 18 megatonnes CO2 (5.2%) and edged upward. Fossil fuels dominated emissions, led by coal, gas and oil.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were very small and variable through the early 1980s, briefly reaching roughly 2 megatonnes CO2 in 1940. They rose from around 0.4 megatonnes CO2 in 1982 to nearly 8 in 2000, then climbed rapidly. Coal emissions reached their peak, around 98 megatonnes CO2, in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were low in the early record, though they reached roughly 2 megatonnes CO2 in 1929. They grew steadily from the late 1940s to about 89 megatonnes CO2 in 2014, then fluctuated and peaked at nearly 95 in 2019. They ended at around 79 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions remained negligible until the early 1980s, then rose quickly from around 0.2 megatonnes CO2 in 1981 to nearly 62 in 2003. Growth continued more gradually thereafter, with emissions peaking at roughly 107 megatonnes CO2 in 2022. They stood at about 95 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions began at around 11 megatonnes CO2 in 1851 and varied substantially, reaching roughly 88 in 1913. They rose sharply from the early 1960s to nearly 300 megatonnes CO2 in 1986, peaking at about 328 in 1988. Emissions then declined to around 61 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other Fossil emissions were close to zero until the mid-1960s, reaching around 0.4 megatonnes CO2 in 1966. They then rose steadily over the following decades. Emissions reached their peak, about 18 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.