Morocco's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
In 2024, Morocco's CO2 emissions totalled around 63 megatonnes CO2e. Oil was the largest source, at roughly 40 megatonnes CO2 and 63.5% of national emissions, followed by coal at around 23 megatonnes CO2 and 36.6%. Other fossil sources contributed about 4.4 megatonnes CO2, gas about 1.8, while land-use was a net removal of roughly 6.2 megatonnes CO2. Over the ten years to 2024, coal and oil increased, while gas, other fossil emissions and net land-use emissions declined.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were negligible in 1930, then rose to around 5 megatonnes CO2 by the mid-1990s and nearly 15 by 2006. They fell to roughly 11 megatonnes CO2 in 2012, before rising to a peak of around 27 megatonnes CO2 in 2022. In 2024, coal emissions were about 23 megatonnes CO2.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions remained negligible until the years after 1945, then increased to around 12 megatonnes CO2 by 1980 and about 20 by 2003. Growth accelerated to nearly 37 megatonnes CO2 in 2011. Emissions then varied at a high level, reaching their record peak of roughly 40 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions were close to zero until the early 2000s. They rose from around 0.1 megatonnes CO2 in 2003 to a peak of roughly 2.4 megatonnes CO2 in 2012. Emissions subsequently declined unevenly, falling to about 0.4 in 2022 before recovering to around 1.8 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Net land-use emissions began at roughly 0.9 megatonnes CO2 in 1851 and rose to nearly 18 by the late 1950s, peaking at around 19 megatonnes CO2 in 1959. They then declined over the following decades, becoming net removals. Net land-use emissions were around -6.2 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions were very small through the mid-20th century, reaching around 0.5 megatonnes CO2 by 1964. They then rose to nearly 2 megatonnes CO2 around 1990 and almost 6 by 2012, peaking at roughly 6.1 in 2013. They subsequently declined to around 4.4 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.