Thailand's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
Thailand's CO2 emissions totalled around 341 megatonnes CO2e in 2024. Oil was the largest source at roughly 105 megatonnes CO2, or 30.9%, followed by gas at 84 megatonnes CO2 (24.7%), land-use at 73 megatonnes CO2 (21.4%), and coal at 60 megatonnes CO2 (17.7%). Other fossil sources contributed 18 megatonnes CO2 (5.3%). Over the ten years to 2024, land-use and oil emissions increased, while coal, gas and other fossil emissions declined.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions were negligible in 1950, at around 0.04 megatonnes CO2, and remained low until the mid-1980s. They then rose rapidly, reaching a peak of roughly 79 megatonnes CO2 in 2018. Emissions subsequently declined, ending at around 60 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions began at roughly 0.8 megatonnes CO2 in 1950 and climbed to around 36 megatonnes CO2 by 1988. They rose sharply to nearly 89 megatonnes CO2 in 1995, then fluctuated before increasing again. Oil emissions peaked at roughly 106 megatonnes CO2 in 2022 and ended near 105 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions were near zero in 1950 and remained small until the early 1980s. They increased rapidly from around 0.6 megatonnes CO2 in 1981 to over 87 megatonnes CO2 in 2014, peaking at roughly 89 megatonnes CO2 in 2015. They then eased overall to around 84 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions began at around 9 megatonnes CO2 in 1851 and increased strongly through the twentieth century, peaking at roughly 371 megatonnes CO2 in 1973. They then fell sharply to around 59 megatonnes CO2 in 1992. Since then, emissions have fluctuated widely and ended at about 73 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions were minimal in the early twentieth century, at roughly 0.03 megatonnes CO2 in 1931. They rose gradually to around 5 megatonnes CO2 by 1989, then increased quickly to nearly 18 megatonnes CO2 in 1996. Emissions peaked at roughly 24 megatonnes CO2 in 2016 and declined to around 18 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.