Russian Federation's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
In 2024, Russian Federation CO2 emissions across these sources totalled around 2,170 megatonnes CO2e. Gas was the largest source, at roughly 858 megatonnes CO2 and 39.5%, followed by oil at about 438 megatonnes CO2 (20.2%), land-use at 389 megatonnes CO2 (17.9%), and coal at 376 megatonnes CO2 (17.3%). Other Fossil contributed around 109 megatonnes CO2, or 5.0%. Over the ten years to 2024, gas, oil and Other Fossil rose, while coal and land-use declined.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions began at around 0.2 megatonnes CO2 in 1855 and remained low into the early twentieth century. They then rose strongly from about 60 megatonnes CO2 in 1930 to a peak of roughly 916 megatonnes CO2 in 1988. Emissions fell sharply to around 505 megatonnes CO2 in 1993, then gradually declined to about 376 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were negligible in the nineteenth century, though they briefly reached around 19 megatonnes CO2 in 1901. From the mid-1920s, they rose rapidly, reaching roughly 811 megatonnes CO2 by 1983 and peaking at about 890 megatonnes CO2 in 1990. They then fell to around 318 megatonnes CO2 in 2000 before recovering to roughly 438 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions were near zero until the mid-1950s, then climbed quickly from around 17 megatonnes CO2 in 1956 to roughly 750 megatonnes CO2 in 1988. They fell to a low of about 669 megatonnes CO2 in 1997, before resuming a gradual rise. Gas emissions reached their record high of around 858 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions started at roughly 398 megatonnes CO2 in 1851 and rose to around 1,021 megatonnes CO2 by 1907. They peaked at about 1,179 megatonnes CO2 in 1939, then declined unevenly to around 76 megatonnes CO2 in 2005. Emissions subsequently increased, reaching about 436 megatonnes CO2 in 2016, and stood near 389 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other Fossil emissions were close to zero through the first half of the twentieth century, although they reached around 1.8 megatonnes CO2 in 1936. From about 1 megatonne CO2 in 1946, emissions increased steadily over subsequent decades. They reached their highest level, roughly 109 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.