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Portugal's Sources of CO₂ Emissions

Name: Portugal's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Creator: Climate Change Tracker
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Key Insights

2024 CO₂ Emissions Profile

In 2024, Portugal's CO₂ emissions across these sources totalled around 40.6 megatonnes CO₂e. Oil dominated, at about 24.7 megatonnes CO₂ or 60.8%, followed by gas at 6.9 megatonnes CO₂ (17.1%) and land-use at 5.0 megatonnes CO₂ (12.4%). Other Fossil contributed 3.8 megatonnes CO₂ (9.4%), while coal was only 0.16 megatonnes CO₂ (0.4%). Over the ten years to 2024, all fossil sources declined, especially coal, while land-use emissions rose.

Historic Coal Emissions

Coal emissions were around 0.02 megatonnes CO₂ in 1870 and rose to roughly 3.5 megatonnes CO₂ by the mid-1930s. They then varied at relatively low levels before climbing sharply from the mid-1980s, peaking at about 14.9 megatonnes CO₂ in 1999. After remaining substantial into the 2010s, they fell steeply to around 0.16 megatonnes CO₂ in 2024.

Historic Oil Emissions

Oil emissions were negligible through the early twentieth century, then increased after 1945 from around 0.3 megatonnes CO₂ to roughly 7 megatonnes CO₂ by the mid-1960s. Growth continued for several decades, reaching a peak of about 43.3 megatonnes CO₂ in 2002. Oil emissions then declined overall, ending at around 24.7 megatonnes CO₂ in 2024.

Historic Gas Emissions

Gas emissions were effectively zero until the late twentieth century, reaching around 1 megatonne CO₂ by 1990. They rose and fluctuated thereafter, peaking at approximately 12.3 megatonnes CO₂ in 2017. Emissions subsequently declined, though with variation, to around 6.9 megatonnes CO₂ in 2024.

Historic Land-use Emissions

Land-use emissions began at roughly 1.7 megatonnes CO₂ in the early 1850s and varied around low single-digit levels for much of the record. They fell from about 2.1 megatonnes CO₂ in 1989 to a net removal of roughly 4.0 megatonnes CO₂ in 2009, then reversed. They peaked near 8.3 megatonnes CO₂ in 2018 and ended at around 5.0 megatonnes CO₂ in 2024.

Historic Other Fossil Emissions

Other Fossil emissions were around 0.04 megatonnes CO₂ in the late 1920s and rose gradually after 1945. Growth accelerated from the late 1960s through the early 2000s, reaching about 5.2 megatonnes CO₂, before peaking at roughly 5.6 megatonnes CO₂ in 2007. They then declined gradually to around 3.8 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 Emissions
Earth 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: Megatonne
Wikipedia: Global warming potential

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About the Data

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.

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