Panama's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
In 2024, Panama's CO2 emissions totalled around 15.6 megatonnes CO2e. Oil dominated, at about 9.4 megatonnes CO2 or 60.3%, and was broadly stable, edging down by around 0.02 megatonnes CO2 per year over the ten years to 2024. Land-use contributed roughly 3.0 megatonnes CO2 (19%) and declined, while coal reached 1.75 megatonnes CO2 (11.2%) after strong growth. Gas accounted for 0.94 megatonnes CO2 (6%), and other fossil sources 0.54 megatonnes CO2 (3.5%), declining over the ten years to 2024.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were negligible through most of the twentieth century, though they briefly reached around 0.3 megatonnes CO2 in 1996 before falling to zero by 2010. They then rose sharply, peaking at roughly 2.5 megatonnes CO2 in 2023, before ending at around 1.75 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were around 0.7 megatonnes CO2 in 1950 and rose to roughly 4.5 megatonnes CO2 by the mid-1970s. They then fell to about 2.3 megatonnes CO2 in 1989, climbed above 9 megatonnes CO2 by 2015, dipped in 2020, and peaked at around 9.4 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions began to matter from the mid-1980s, at around 0.1 megatonnes CO2 in 1986. They generally increased thereafter but fluctuated, peaking at roughly 1.7 megatonnes CO2 in 2019. Gas emissions ended at around 0.94 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions began at around 2.6 megatonnes CO2 in the early 1850s and rose to roughly 9 megatonnes CO2 by the mid-1920s. They increased steeply after that, peaking at about 43 megatonnes CO2 in 1959, before a long decline to around 3.0 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions began at only around 0.02 megatonnes CO2 in the late 1940s and rose gradually to about 0.2 megatonnes CO2 by 1995. They then fluctuated, peaking at roughly 0.8 megatonnes CO2 in 2014, and ended at around 0.54 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.