![]() Many countries in the world still have very low per capita CO 2 emissions. Prosperity is a primary driver of CO 2 emissions, but clearly policy and technological choices make a difference. This means a much lower share of electricity is produced from fossil fuels: in 2015, only 6% of France’s electricity came from fossil fuels, compared to 55% in Germany. The choice of energy sources plays a key role here: in the UK, Portugal and France, a much higher share of electricity is produced from nuclear and renewable sources – you can explore this electricity mix by country here. This is also much lower than some of their neighbours with similar standards of living, such as Germany, the Netherlands, or Belgium. In fact, some European countries have emissions not far from the global average: In 2017 emissions in Portugal are 5.3 tonnes 5.5t in France and 5.8t per person in the UK. Many countries across Europe, for example, have much lower emissions than the US, Canada or Australia. But what becomes clear is that there can be large differences in per capita emissions, even between countries with similar standards of living. Since there is such a strong relationship between income and per capita CO 2 emissions, we’d expect this to be the case: that countries with high standards of living would have a high carbon footprint. This is more than 3 times higher than the global average, which in 2017 was 4.8 tonnes per person. Australia has an average per capita footprint of 17 tonnes, followed by the US at 16.2 tonnes, and Canada at 15.6 tonnes. More populous countries with some of the highest per capita emissions – and therefore high total emissions – are the United States, Australia, and Canada. However, many of the major oil producers have a relatively small population meaning their total annual emissions are low. Most are in the Middle East: In 2017 Qatar had the highest emissions at 49 tonnes (t) per person, followed by Trinidad and Tobago (30t) Kuwait (25t) United Arab Emirates (25t) Brunei (24t) Bahrain (23t) and Saudi Arabia (19t). The world’s largest per capita CO 2 emitters are the major oil producing countries this is particularly true for those with relatively low population size. There are very large inequalities in per capita emissions across the world. Production figures matter – these are the numbers that are taken into account for climate targets 1 – and thanks to historical reconstructions they are available for the entire world since the mid 18th century. In our post on consumption-based emissions we look at how these figures change when we account for trade. Here we look at production-based emissions – that is, emissions produced within a country’s boundaries without accounting for how goods are traded across the world. In the visualization we see the differences in per capita emissions across the world. We can calculate the contribution of the average citizen of each country by dividing its total emissions by its population. Where in the world does the average person emit the most carbon dioxide (CO 2) each year?
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