What are the CO2 emissions of a single person?

#CarbonCatchers series

Global CO2 emissions are rising, and with that so are global temperatures. Climate change is upon us. We need to act now in order to avoid the worst consequences of a world that is several degrees warmer. A popular method to balance out carbon emissions is purchasing carbon offsets in the form of trees which act as a carbon sink. Many do this to cancel out the carbon cost of air travel for example, but more and more people are now using offsets to balance out the carbon cost of their everyday life. So, what in fact are the carbon emissions of a single person?

Figure 1: Power station in Nottingham, England. Photo by Diana Parkhouse on Unsplash.

It is very useful to know what the CO2 emissions per capita are of a country, especially if you are looking to reduce your emissions in your own life. Looking at the emissions of a country as a whole can often be misleading. For example, China as a country has the highest levels of emissions globally but when you translate this into per capita it has similar emissions to the UK (Ritchie and Roser, 2019; see below figure). This can also work in reverse as is the case with Iceland and New Zealand which have some of the higher per capita emissions but in terms of total emissions are actually relatively low.

Figure 2: Top – CO2 emissions per country across the globe. Bottom - Map of CO2 emissions per capita across the globe Image taken from Ritchie and Roser, 2019.

While the above figures are useful for getting a visual representation of emissions around the world, focusing on a country’s carbon emissions alone does not give the full picture of how that country is contributing to climate change. Carbon dioxide is not the only heat trapping gas currently wreaking havoc on the planet – other major culprits include methane (CH4), Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), many hydrocarbons as well as ozone (O3) and nitrous oxide (N2O) (Climate communication, 2020). In order to get a full picture of our impact on the planet, it is better to use total greenhouse gas emissions or CO2 equivalent emissions (#CO2eq).

Data for world emissions per capita has been compiled by the World Resources Institute and can be seen online using the Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (World Resources Institute, 2014). The world average is 6.27 tonnes CO2eq per capita per year. However, there is great disparity between the contribution of developed and developing nations to this average figure. Developed countries typically have much higher carbon emissions per capita than developing countries. For example, many African countries such as Rwanda have CO2 emissions as low as 0.6 tonnes CO2eq per capita while Australia emits a staggering 25.06 tonnes CO2 per capita every year (World Resources Institute, 2014). Furthermore, most of the big oil countries have significantly higher CO2eq emissions per capita with Kuwait emitting 54.41 tonnes CO2eq per capita per year. Therefore, if you are planning to purchase offsets for your everyday life, it is worth looking up the CO2eq emissions for your country.

Trends

Worldwide, emissions are still showing an increasing trend. This is particularly evident in Asia. Emissions are also rising in Africa but are still much lower than emissions in the northern hemisphere. In some places, emissions are falling such as in the European Union, the US and in New Zealand (IEA Data Services, 2020). The Paris Agreement aims to keep all warming under 2°C, however, with the current trends it is estimated by UNEP that current warming will reach 3.2°C by the end of this century (United Nations Environment Program, 2019).

Figure 3: Annual total CO2 emissions by world regions. Chart from Our World in Data.

Conclusion:

Data collated by the International Energy Association shows that there is an increasing trend in both total emissions and emissions per capita (IEA Data Services, 2020). Given that all the IPCC reports indicate we need to decrease emissions from between 40-70% those of 2010 in order to avoid dangerous climate warming, this trend is deeply worrying (IPCC, 2018). The solution to this is to start adopting a lower carbon lifestyle, which many people and many countries have already done. In the meantime, for the emissions you can’t reduce immediately it is possible to offset your yearly CO2eq emissions by planting just 6 trees a year. There is an automated program on Tree Nation which does just that. For this program, the average emissions of CO2eq per capita per year are estimated at 9 tonnes. This is because most developed nations have CO2eq emissions above the world average and, most of our sponsors come from developed nations

Our calculations:

The greenhouse gas emissions of one person in the world is, on average, 6.27 tonnes of CO2eq.
The greenhouse gas emissions of one person in Europe is, on average, 8.5 tonnes of CO2eq.
The greenhouse gas emissions of one person in the USA is, on average, 19.9 tonnes of CO2eq.

Keywords: #CO2emissions #emissionspercapita #globalwarming #hydrocarbons #CO2eq #EcoEducation

References:

Climate Communication, 2020. Heat trapping gases. Accessed January 2020 <https://www.climatecommunication.org/climate/heat-...>

IEA Data Services, 2020. Data and statistics. Accessed January 2020 <https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics?country=EU...>

IPCC, 2018: Summary for Policymakers. In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds.)]. In Press.

Ritchie, H. and Roser, M., 2019. CO2 and Greenhouse gas emissions. Our world in Data. Accessed January 2020 < https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhous...>

United Nations Environment Program, 2019. Emissions gap report 2019. UNEP, Nairobi. Accessed February 2020 <https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/emissions-...>

World Resources Institute, 2014. Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT) version 2.0. Washington DC: World Resources Institute. Accessed January 2020. < https://web.archive.org/web/20160528015511/http://cait2.wri.org/historical#>