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CO₂ emissions per capita in Europe by country

CO₂ per person: all 39 European countries ranked from highest to lowest, with the change on the year before and the EU median. Updated from official sources.

  • Luxembourg ranks first at 10.6 t, ahead of Iceland (8.5 t) and Estonia (7.8 t).
  • At the other end is Albania at 1.8 t.
  • The top figure is 5.9× the bottom one.
  • The median EU country sits at 5.3 t.
  • Since 2023, Slovenia rose the most (6.0 t to 6.3 t) and Czechia fell the most (7.9 t to 7.1 t).
CO₂ per person, 2024, highest first
RankCountryCO₂ per personChange on 2023
1Saudi Arabia18.5 t−2.0%
2United Arab Emirates18.3 t−0.7%
3Australia14.1 t−0.4%
4Canada14.0 t−1.1%
5United States13.6 t−0.7%
6South Korea11.4 t−0.5%
17Luxembourg10.6 t+1.4%
8Singapore9.8 t+2.9%
9China9.3 t+0.9%
210Iceland8.5 t+2.0%
11Japan7.8 t−2.6%
312Estonia7.8 t−7.3%
413Poland7.6 t−1.3%
514Belgium7.3 t+0.4%
615Norway7.2 t−4.8%
716Czechia7.1 t−9.5%
817Germany6.9 t−1.9%
918Netherlands6.6 t−4.0%
1019Bosnia and Herzegovina6.4 t−1.4%
1120Austria6.3 t−1.3%
1221Slovenia6.3 t+5.3%
1322Ireland6.0 t−2.4%
1423Finland5.5 t−6.0%
1524Slovakia5.5 t−3.9%
1625Cyprus5.4 t+0.9%
1726Turkey5.4 t+2.8%
1827Bulgaria5.3 t−7.5%
1928Italy5.1 t−1.6%
2029Greece5.0 t+2.5%
2130Croatia4.8 t−0.1%
2231Spain4.5 t−1.4%
2332Lithuania4.5 t−0.6%
2433Hungary4.5 t−0.5%
2534Denmark4.3 t−2.9%
2635United Kingdom4.2 t−5.1%
2736France4.0 t−3.7%
2837North Macedonia4.0 t−8.8%
2938Switzerland3.7 t−1.1%
3039Romania3.7 t+0.9%
3140Latvia3.6 t−0.4%
41Mexico3.6 t−0.8%
3242Sweden3.6 t+2.7%
3343Moldova3.4 t+2.3%
3444Portugal3.3 t−6.0%
3545Malta3.2 t−1.7%
3646Ukraine3.1 t−3.0%
47Indonesia2.9 t+4.3%
48Brazil2.3 t+1.9%
49India2.2 t+3.7%
3750Albania1.8 t+2.0%

No figure for 2024: Montenegro, Serbia. Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators.

Compare any two countries side by side →

Methodology

Inflation, unemployment and the minimum wage come from Eurostat and rank the latest period with figures for at least 80% of the countries Eurostat currently covers. Countries report on different days, and ranking the very latest month would leave out everyone who has not yet published. Inflation is the annual rate of the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP); unemployment is the seasonally adjusted rate for people aged 15–74, on the ILO definition; the minimum wage is the gross monthly statutory rate in euros, published twice a year. The EU figure on these pages is Eurostat's own, weighted for the whole union. The change column compares with the month before, or for the minimum wage with the same half-year a year earlier. Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Italy, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland have no statutory minimum wage — pay floors are set by collective agreements — and are named below that table rather than ranked. Eurostat does not cover every European country, and has not covered the United Kingdom since 2020; those countries are named rather than ranked.

The other twelve rankings use one year for every country: the latest year, up to last year, for which at least 80% of the 52 listed countries have figures, so that no country is ranked against another country's older number and the IMF's projections for the current year are never used. GDP, GDP per person, real growth, government debt and population come from the IMF World Economic Outlook, revised each April and October; figures for the most recent year are partly IMF estimates. Life expectancy, urban population, internet use, land area and CO₂ emissions per person (excluding land use) come from the World Bank's World Development Indicators. The Human Development Index is published by the UN Development Programme and taken from Our World in Data. Population density is population divided by land area. Money figures are in current US dollars at market exchange rates, not adjusted for purchasing power.

The European ranking covers the EU-27, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Turkey and the EU candidate countries in the Western Balkans, Moldova and Ukraine: 39 countries. Where a source also covers large economies elsewhere, a wider view adds them for context. Rankings run from the highest figure to the lowest, which is not always the best: first place in unemployment or government debt is the highest rate, not the lowest. The EU median on the annual rankings is the middle EU country's figure, not an EU-wide average.

Eurostat figures are checked every day and the annual figures every week, and the pages rebuild whenever one of them changes. Eurostat, World Bank and Our World in Data figures are published under CC BY 4.0; the IMF figures are used under the IMF's terms of use.

Sources

Cite this as: News Unlimited, “Country rankings: Europe on 15 indicators”.