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To learn more about a CarbonTracker Europe component, click on one of the above images.
Or download the full PDF version for convenience.
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1. Introduction
Human beings first influenced the carbon cycle through land-use change. Early humans used fire to control animals and later cleared forest for agriculture. Over the last two centuries, following the industrial and technical revolutions and the world population increase, fossil fuel combustion has become the largest anthropogenic source of CO2. Coal, oil and natural gas combustion indeed are the most common energy sources in both developed and developing countries. Various sectors of the economy rely on fossil fuel combustion: power generation, transportation, residential/commercial building heating, and industrial processes. In 2014, the world emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel burning, cement manufacturing, and flaring reached 9.85 PgC and stayed almost constant in 2015 at 9.86 PgC (1 PgC=1015 grams of carbon) [CDIAC]. The largest share of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning was in China: 29% in 2017, followed by the USA (14%), Europe/EU28 (10%) and India (7%).
2. Detailed Description
The fossil fuel emission inventory used in CarbonTracker Europe is the one constructed for the CARBONES project by USTUTT/IER. It uses emissions from the EDGAR 4.2 database together with country and sector specific time profiles derived by IER. A detailed description of the construction of the product is found here. The global total emissions for 2000-2017 were scaled to the global totals used in the Global Carbon Budget 2017. An individual trend per continent/Transcom region was applied in this scaling.
3. Further Reading
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