Using PlainEmissions Data for Research and Reporting

Who this guide is for

This site is read by journalists working climate stories on deadline, researchers doing comparative-policy work, ESG analysts at asset managers and corporate sustainability teams, NGO staff preparing country briefs, and students learning the field. The methodology choices are the same regardless of audience; the citation conventions differ slightly. This guide covers both.

Citation convention

When citing a figure from PlainEmissions, credit both PlainEmissions and the upstream source (EDGAR / World Bank / Climate TRACE / UNFCCC). The license carries through from upstream, CC BY 4.0 for EDGAR, World Bank, and Climate TRACE; public domain for UNFCCC. Example citations:

• News article: "PlainEmissions, citing EU EDGAR v8.0 (Joint Research Centre, 2024)."
• Academic paper: "PlainEmissions (2026). Country emissions for [country] sourced from European Commission Joint Research Centre EDGAR v8.0. Retrieved YYYY-MM-DD from https://plainemissions.com/country/[slug]."
• ESG report: "Greenhouse-gas inventory for [country] per UNFCCC National Inventory Submission, harmonized via PlainEmissions methodology. Production-based CO2-equivalent. GWP100 per IPCC AR6."

Methodological caveats every reader should disclose

Whatever you write or cite, disclose:

• Production-based versus consumption-based. The two answer different questions.
• LULUCF included or excluded. The sign of national net emissions can flip.
• CO2 only versus total greenhouse gases. Agriculture-heavy economies look very different.
• Source choice. EDGAR and UNFCCC and Climate TRACE disagree; pick consciously and disclose.
• GWP horizon. GWP100 is convention; GWP20 makes methane look three times worse.
• Vintage. Data published in 2024 may use 2022 activity data. Check the methodology page for current vintages.

Programmatic access

Direct programmatic data access (JSON API, bulk download) is not yet generally available. For one-off research use, scraping public pages is allowed within reasonable rate limits (per our terms of use). For bulk research-data access, institutional licensing, or commercial use, please contact hello@plainemissions.com.

Researchers can also work directly with the upstream data, EU EDGAR, World Bank Climate Knowledge Portal, Climate TRACE, and UNFCCC all offer free bulk downloads. PlainEmissions's value is the harmonization layer and the multi-source reconciliation, not the raw data (which is freely available from each upstream source).

When NOT to use PlainEmissions data

This site is informational and research-oriented. It is NOT:

• An ESG attestation service. Companies preparing CSRD, TCFD, or SBTi-compliant disclosures must use audited inventories, typically a third-party assurance partner working from primary source documents.
• A policy-target compliance reference. National emission reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement are tracked against UNFCCC inventory submissions, not against PlainEmissions's harmonized figures. Use the official UNFCCC record for legal-status questions.
• A real-time trading signal. Emissions data is annual or quarterly. Carbon-market trading uses different inputs (typically real-time energy market data plus emission factors).

Examples of responsible use

• Country profile for a journalism piece. Headline figure from EDGAR (for cross-country comparability), with UNFCCC and Climate TRACE figures sidebar'd to surface source disagreement. Per-capita and absolute both shown. LULUCF clearly separated.
• Comparative-policy academic paper. Production-based, LULUCF-excluded, total greenhouse-gas CO2-equivalent at GWP100, for a 35-country sample over 1990-2022. Document the source selection and the harmonization choices in the paper's data appendix.
• ESG country-risk briefing. Multi-source spread shown as primary methodology disclosure. Trend line indexed to the country's stated reduction target. Sector-by-sector breakdown to identify which sectors are off-trajectory.

Get in touch

For data corrections, source-attribution questions, custom data slices, programmatic access, or methodology discussion, contact hello@plainemissions.com. We aim to respond within 72 hours on business days. Researchers and journalists working on time-sensitive stories should mention deadlines in the subject line so we can prioritize accordingly.

Key takeaways

• The number is downstream of the methodology, which gas, which source, which framing.
• Multi-source disagreement is informative, not embarrassing, it surfaces uncertainty.
• Production-based versus consumption-based; LULUCF-included versus excluded; per-capita versus absolute, each framing answers a different question.
• Satellite-derived measurements (Climate TRACE) are progressively rebalancing the historical reliance on self-reported inventories.
• GWP100 is convention; GWP20 dramatically reweights short-lived gases like methane.

Further reading on PlainEmissions

• Understanding CO2-equivalent and GWP100 - the unit-conversion explainer.
• EDGAR vs UNFCCC - why two sources disagree.
• LULUCF: most-disputed sector - where source disagreement is largest.
• Climate TRACE explained - independent satellite verification.
• Reading emissions time series - six framing choices to watch.
• IPCC sector taxonomy - the canonical 8-sector hierarchy.
• Methodology page - full data-source provenance and harmonization steps.

Definitions used on this site

• CO2-equivalent (CO2e): any greenhouse gas expressed as the mass of CO2 that would produce equivalent warming over a chosen time horizon, typically 100 years.
• GWP100 / GWP20: global-warming potential over 100 (or 20) years; the multiplier used to convert from native gas units to CO2-equivalent.
• LULUCF: Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry, the IPCC sector covering carbon stocks in vegetation and soils.
• Production-based emissions: emissions attributed to the country where they physically occur.
• Consumption-based emissions: emissions attributed to the country where the final goods or services are consumed.
• Annex I: the group of historically-developed countries under the UNFCCC with deeper reporting obligations.