Sweden's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
Sweden's 2024 CO2 emissions across these sources totalled around 43 megatonnes CO2e. Oil dominated, at around 27 megatonnes CO2 or 63%, followed by coal at 6.5 megatonnes CO2, 15%, and land-use at 4.9 megatonnes CO2, 11%. Other fossil sources contributed 2.9 megatonnes CO2, 7%, while gas supplied 1.5 megatonnes CO2, 3.5%. Over the ten years to 2024, oil, coal, gas and other fossil emissions declined, while land-use emissions edged up.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions rose from around 0.2 megatonnes CO2 in 1851 to nearly 3 megatonnes by 1881, then climbed to a peak of roughly 25 megatonnes CO2 in 1937. They subsequently declined unevenly, briefly recovering around the 1980s, before falling from nearly 12 megatonnes in 1990 to around 6.5 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were very low through the early twentieth century, although they reached roughly 4.6 megatonnes CO2 in 1939. They then surged from around 0.6 megatonnes in 1945 to a peak of about 83 megatonnes CO2 in 1970. After a sustained decline, emissions reached around 27 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions remained at zero until the mid-1980s, then rose to around 2.2 megatonnes CO2 by 1996. They fluctuated thereafter, reaching a peak of roughly 3.4 megatonnes CO2 in 2010, before trending downward overall. In 2024, gas emissions were around 1.5 megatonnes CO2.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions began at roughly 28 megatonnes CO2 in 1851 and peaked at around 34 megatonnes in 1879. They declined through the first half of the twentieth century, then became net removals, reaching a low near minus 24 megatonnes CO2 in 1964. They later rose steadily, reaching around 4.9 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions began around 0.1 megatonnes CO2 in the early twentieth century and rose to roughly 2 megatonnes by 1970. After declining during the 1970s, they increased again, peaking at about 3 megatonnes CO2 in 2022. Emissions ended at around 2.9 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.