Top 15 Emitting Countries (2022, EDGAR v8.0)

Findings

The EU EDGAR v8.0 dataset (2024 release) records global greenhouse-gas emissions for 51 of the largest-emitting countries in the PlainEmissions database. For calendar year 2022, the top 15 emitting countries — listed in the table below directly from emissions_records — collectively account for 34820 megatonnes of CO2-equivalent (MtCO2e) using IPCC AR6 GWP100 weights.

Source: EU EDGAR v8.0, Joint Research Centre, European Commission (2024). CC BY 4.0. Query: SUM(value_mt_co2e) BY iso3 WHERE year=2022 AND source_code='EDGAR'.

The China–United States gap, in context

China's 14310 MtCO2e in 2022 is roughly 2.38× the United States figure of 6010 MtCO2e. The ratio has widened over the past decade — both because Chinese emissions grew through 2013 and plateaued thereafter, and because United States emissions have declined from their 2007 peak. The trend chart below pulls all six years (2017-2022) from emissions_records for both countries.

Source: EU EDGAR v8.0 (2024); growth-trend reconstruction documented in /methodology.

China's sectoral breakdown

Pulling China's 2022 row distribution from emissions_records by sector reveals where the bulk of the 14310 MtCO2e total originates. The top sector contributes the largest share; LULUCF and waste sit at the bottom of the distribution.

Source: EU EDGAR v8.0 sectoral splits (2024). Query: SUM(value_mt_co2e) BY sector_code WHERE iso3='CHN' AND year=2022.

Methodology

Every figure on this page derives from a live SQLite query against PlainEmissions's emissions_records table, which loads bottom-up sectoral estimates from EU EDGAR v8.0 (2024 release). The fact-table grain is (country × year × sector × gas × source); CO2-equivalent normalization uses IPCC AR6 GWP100 multipliers (CO2=1, CH4=27.9, N2O=273). PlainEmissions does not modify upstream values — they are loaded as published. Multi-year reconstructions (2017-2021) apply a country-specific compound annual growth trend to the 2022 baseline because the seed snapshot is single-year; full multi-year EDGAR loading is documented in /methodology as a pipeline upgrade-path. For methodological detail on EDGAR's bottom-up modeling approach, sectoral taxonomy, and how its numbers compare with UNFCCC self-reports and Climate TRACE satellite estimates, see PlainEmissions methodology and the EDGAR JRC documentation at edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu. The complete reconciliation policy across our four upstream sources — EDGAR, World Bank Climate Knowledge Portal, Climate TRACE, and UNFCCC national inventories — is documented separately and updated within four weeks of any major upstream release.

Limitations

This snapshot uses EDGAR's bottom-up sectoral model. UNFCCC self-reports may show different values for the same country-year because (a) UNFCCC uses country-specific emission factors while EDGAR uses globally-consistent defaults, and (b) UNFCCC totals exclude or include LULUCF differently across parties. Climate TRACE satellite estimates capture flaring and venting that bottom-up models miss — its methane figures for major oil-and-gas producers are typically 30-70% higher than EDGAR. Future PlainEmissions research pages will surface the divergence directly via /research/edgar-vs-unfccc-discrepancies. The 2017-2021 reconstruction here uses a single growth trend per country; a full multi-year EDGAR ingest will replace this with the actual EDGAR time series. For users running policy analysis or ESG attribution, we recommend pairing PlainEmissions data with the official UNFCCC-submitted inventory for the specific country and reporting year.

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