One Official Measure Puts Denmark's Emissions at More Than Double the Other

Two numbers, both official, both correct

The European Union publishes greenhouse gas emissions on two different bases, and for some Member States they disagree by more than a factor of two.

The national inventory basis counts emissions released inside a country's territory. It is the basis used for climate targets and for the companion study on this site, and on it Denmark emits 6.1 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per inhabitant.

The air emissions accounts basis counts emissions produced by economic units resident in a country, wherever in the world they operate. On it, Denmark emits 13.5 tonnes per inhabitant.

Neither figure is wrong. They answer different questions.

Where the gap comes from

The largest single source of divergence is international transport, and shipping above all.

A vessel operated by a Danish company sailing between two ports outside Denmark burns fuel that never enters Danish territory. Under the territorial inventory it is not Denmark's. Under the accounts basis, which follows the resident operator, it is.

Denmark is home to one of the world's largest container shipping operations. Malta, whose divergence is larger still, hosts one of the world's largest ship registries. Both records follow directly from that.

The full comparison

Nine Member States sit clearly higher on the accounts basis than on the inventory basis, and Spain is level at 4.4 tonnes on both. Ranked by how far it exceeds: Malta plus 7.8 tonnes per inhabitant, Denmark plus 7.4, Sweden plus 4.7, Lithuania plus 3.7, Luxembourg plus 1.7 and Romania plus 1.5. Ireland, Bulgaria and Slovenia follow, each by under a tonne.

Sweden is the case worth pausing on. On the inventory basis Sweden records minus 0.6 tonnes per inhabitant — net negative, because its land sink exceeds its territorial emissions. On the accounts basis it records 4.1 tonnes. A country that appears to have solved the problem on one measure appears ordinary on the other.

Several Member States move the other way. Germany falls from 8.5 tonnes on the inventory basis to 6.3 on the accounts basis, Finland from 8.7 to 6.6, Estonia from 8.9 to 7.0 and Austria from 7.6 to 5.9. These are countries where emissions occur on their territory from activity that the accounts attribute elsewhere, or where the inventory includes land use and household emissions that the production accounts exclude.

What this is not

This is not a claim that any Member State is misreporting. Both series are compiled to international standards, published by the same statistical authority, and correct on their own definitions.

It is a claim about how emissions figures should be read. A number quoted without its basis is ambiguous for at least six Member States, and the ambiguity is larger than most of the year-on-year changes that get reported as progress.

Which one to use

For compliance with climate targets, the inventory basis is the relevant one: that is what the framework is written against.

For asking what an economy's activity causes, the accounts basis has the better claim, because it does not stop counting at a border that ships and aircraft cross by design.

For comparing countries, the only safe rule is to use one basis throughout and say which. This site uses the inventory basis in the environment and energy category and the accounts basis here, and each study names its own.