United Kingdom's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
In 2024, the United Kingdom's emissions across these sources totalled around 318 megatonnes CO2e. Oil was largest at about 160 megatonnes CO2, or 50.1%, followed by gas at roughly 127 megatonnes CO2 (39.8%). Coal contributed 16.9 megatonnes CO2 (5.3%), Other Fossil 9.7 (3.1%), and Land-use 5.5 (1.7%). Oil and gas dominated emissions, while every source declined over the ten years to 2024, led by coal, down around 6.1 megatonnes CO2 per year.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions began at roughly 116 megatonnes CO2 in 1851 and climbed to their historic peak of about 502 megatonnes CO2 in 1916. After a sharp early-1920s fall and a partial recovery, they declined markedly from the late 1950s onward. They reached around 16.9 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were negligible through the early twentieth century, reaching about 5.9 megatonnes CO2 in 1913. They then rose rapidly after the mid-1950s, peaking at roughly 292 megatonnes CO2 in 1973. Emissions subsequently trended downward, despite variation, ending at around 160 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions were near zero until the mid-1960s, when they stood at about 1.7 megatonnes CO2. They rose strongly through the late twentieth century, peaking at roughly 212 megatonnes CO2 in 2004. Since the early 2000s they have declined, reaching around 127 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions started at about 10 megatonnes CO2 in 1851 and varied around lower levels before rising to a peak of roughly 38 megatonnes CO2 in 1962. They then fell sharply, later fluctuating from net removals in 1992 to higher emissions in the mid-2000s. They ended at around 5.5 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other Fossil emissions were around 2.2 megatonnes CO2 in the late 1920s and rose gradually through the following decades. They peaked at roughly 20.5 megatonnes CO2 in 1979, then fell, rebounded during the early 1990s, and resumed a gradual decline. They reached around 9.7 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.