Ranked: CO2 Emissions Per Person in 30 Economies

What We're Showing

CO2 emissions are reshaping the rules, costs, and flows of international trade as countries and industries adapt to the global push for carbon neutrality and sustainable practices.

This graphic, created in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation, visualizes CO2 emissions per person across 30 major economies, using data from the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR).

Key Takeaways

• To create the STI’s emissions metric, data on CO2 emissions per person from EDGAR were converted into a numerical index score and averaged for each economy, with a range of 0 to 100. 
• As expected, countries with lower GDP per capita—including Papua New Guinea and Bangladesh—scored well on the CO2 emissions per capita metric.
• Conversely, higher income countries—such as Canada and Australia—scored poorly on this metric, primarily due to their higher levels of energy consumption and industrialization.