Uruguay's Sources of CO2 Emissions
Key Insights
2024 CO2 Emissions Profile
Uruguay's CO2 emissions totalled around 10.5 megatonnes CO2e in 2024. Oil dominated, at roughly 7.4 megatonnes CO2 or 70%, rising by about 0.16 megatonnes CO2 per year over the ten years to 2024. Land-use contributed around 2.6 megatonnes CO2, or 24.3%, but declined by about 0.57 megatonnes CO2 annually. Other fossil sources, gas and coal were much smaller, at 0.36, 0.23 and 0.008 megatonnes CO2 respectively; each rose slightly.
Historic Coal Emissions
Coal emissions began at around 0.03 megatonnes CO2 in the mid-1850s and rose to roughly 2.5 megatonnes by 1908, peaking near 2.6 megatonnes CO2 in 1910. They then declined steadily to around 0.3 megatonnes by 1947 and remained minimal thereafter, ending at about 0.008 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Oil Emissions
Oil emissions were near zero until the mid-1940s, then climbed to around 3.4 megatonnes CO2 by 1954 and nearly 6 megatonnes by the late 1970s. After a dip in the early 1980s, they rose to a peak of roughly 8.1 megatonnes CO2 in 2012. Emissions fluctuated lower afterwards, ending near 7.4 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Gas Emissions
Gas emissions have remained a small component of Uruguay's CO2 emissions across the historical record. They reached around 0.23 megatonnes CO2 in 2024, following a modest rise over the ten years to 2024.
Historic Land-use Emissions
Land-use emissions began at about 4.2 megatonnes CO2 in the early 1850s and rose above 18 megatonnes by the late 1890s. They fell sharply after the mid-1950s, becoming a net removal of roughly 6.8 megatonnes CO2 in 1979. Emissions then increased, peaking near 21 megatonnes CO2 in 2008, before declining to around 2.6 megatonnes CO2 in 2024.
Historic Other Fossil Emissions
Other fossil emissions were around 0.08 megatonnes CO2 in the early 1930s and generally remained low. They rose to roughly 0.4 megatonnes by the late 1990s, peaking near 0.47 megatonnes CO2 in 2003, before fluctuating at lower levels. They ended at around 0.36 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.