# CO₂ emissions per capita: source and method

## Citation

Global Carbon Budget (2025); Population based on various sources (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “CO₂ emissions per capita” \[dataset\]. Global Carbon Project, “Global Carbon Budget v15”; Various sources, “Population” \[original data\].

## What it measures

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from burning fossil fuels and industrial processes. This includes emissions from transport, electricity generation, and heating, but not land-use change. Unit: tonnes per person.

## How the data were processed

Global emissions are converted from tonnes of carbon to tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) using a factor of 3.664. This is the conversion factor [recommended by the Global Carbon Project](https://globalcarbonbudgetdata.org/downloads/jGJH0-data/Global+Carbon+Budget+v2024+Dataset+Descriptions.pdf). It reflects that one tonne of carbon, when fully oxidized, forms 3.664 tonnes of CO₂, based on the relative molecular weights of carbon and oxygen in CO₂.

Emissions from the 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires are included in Kuwait's emissions for that year.- To calculate CO₂ emissions per capita, we divide the original data by a country's estimated population. These estimates come from our population dataset based on [multiple sources](https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources).

## Where it was taken from

- Chart: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita)
- Full metadata: [https://api.ourworldindata.org/v1/indicators/1119914.metadata.json](https://api.ourworldindata.org/v1/indicators/1119914.metadata.json)
- Last updated by Our World in Data: 2025-11-13. Taken for this site on 22 October 2026.

Our World in Data publishes its data under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence; data produced by third parties keep their own licence, given in the full metadata. [How this site takes its figures](/method) · [All co₂ emissions per capita figures](/co2-per-capita).

[This page in HTML](/sources/co2-per-capita) · [Home](/) · [Method](/method) · [Sources](/sources) · [Terms](/terms)

Requests to this site are logged for research and reported only in aggregate; see the terms.