The Global Carbon Project's fossil CO2 emissions dataset

The Global Carbon Project (GCP) has been publishing estimates of global and national fossil CO2 emissions since 2001. In the first instance these were simple re-publications of data from another source, but over subsequent years refinements have been made in response to feedback and identification of inaccuracies. In this article (PDF document) we describe the history of this process leading up to the methodology used in the 2023 release of the GCP's fossil CO2 dataset.

The fossil CO2 emissions dataset is included in both its standard, absolute form, and per capita, with associated metadata files in JSON format. A file indicating the source(s) of each data point is also provided.

The main changes in this release are new estimates for emissions from coal before 1950 for Latin American countries. There are also a number of corrections and updates from underlying low-lag data sources.

Notes

1. This release contains known problems with Réunion, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and Martinique as a result of changes to France's reporting. We are actively working to resolve these.

2. An error has been found in the UN M49 codes provided in the data files. This column should be considered to be unreliable. This will be fixed in the next release.