Sweden's Forests Absorb More Greenhouse Gas Than Its Economy Emits

Net emissions, and why the sign can flip

Greenhouse gas accounting usually reports what an economy emits. This indicator reports what it emits net of what its land absorbs — forests, soils and other land use, which take carbon out of the atmosphere as well as putting it in.

That distinction is what allows a country to record a negative number, and one does. Sweden's net emissions in 2024 were −6.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, or −0.6 tonnes per head. Its forests absorbed more than its industry, transport, agriculture and buildings emitted.

On an index where 1990 equals 100, Sweden reads −57.7. There is no other observation like it in the Union.

The three countries above their 1990 level

Thirty-four years after the baseline, three Member States still emit more on this measure than they did in 1990.

Cyprus records 157.5, more than half again above its starting point. Finland records 114.0 and Austria 106.2. Ireland, at 90.9, and Latvia, at 89.9, are the next closest to their baselines.

Two of those three are land-use stories rather than emissions stories, and the same table settles which. Measured excluding land use, Finland reads 54.7 against 1990: its emissions are down by nearly half, and everything that lifts it above its baseline comes from the land-use term. Austria reads 83.6 on that basis and would also sit well below 1990 without it. Cyprus reads 158.3, almost exactly its net figure — of the three it is the only one genuinely above 1990 on what its economy emits.

A country with very large forests is heavily exposed to changes in how much carbon those forests absorb, and this indicator counts that. Latvia shows it as sharply as Finland does: its net index of 89.9 falls to 37.0 once land use is taken out.

The countries furthest below 1990

At the other end, Lithuania records 24.0, Romania 27.7 and Estonia 33.5 — net emissions between a quarter and a third of their 1990 levels. Bulgaria at 42.2 and Slovakia at 44.4 follow.

This group is almost entirely central and eastern European, and 1990 is the reason. The baseline year sits immediately before the collapse of heavy industry across the former Eastern bloc, so a large part of the reduction these countries record was delivered by economic restructuring in the early 1990s rather than by climate policy since.

That does not make the figures wrong. It makes the index a poor instrument for comparing effort, which is a different question from the one it answers.

Emissions per head tell a different story

Ranked by emissions per capita rather than against 1990, the order changes substantially. Ireland records 10.5 tonnes per head, Luxembourg 10.1, and Cyprus and Estonia 8.9 each. At the bottom sit Romania at 3.4, Lithuania at 3.6 and Malta at 3.8.

Sweden appears at −0.6.

Ireland is the case where the two rankings most clearly disagree: at 90.9 against 1990 it looks like a laggard on progress, and at 10.5 tonnes per head it is the Union's largest emitter per person. Both readings are correct, and neither is the whole picture.

Two of the highest per-head emitters, Estonia and Ireland, also appear at opposite ends of the energy import dependency ranking, which is a reminder that these indicators are not measuring the same underlying thing.