Trends in global CO2 and total greenhouse gas emissions: 2021 summary report

In 2019, the growth in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (excluding those from land-use change) slowed down to 0.6%, reaching 51.7 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2 eq. This revised growth rate is half of last year’s estimate of 1.1% and less than half of the average annual growth rate of 1.5% since 2005. However, in 2020, the year in which the world economy and society was fully affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, global total GHG emissions are estimated to have declined by about 4% to 49.8 GtCO2 eq. This is the only report that provides estimations of all recent global greenhouse gas emissions (not only CO2).