Greenhouse gas emissions relative to the 1990 baseline
- Eurostat dataset
- env_air_gge
- Reference period
- 2024
- Unit of measure
- million tonnes CO2 equivalent
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2024): 2 786 million tonnes CO2 equivalent.
- Highest value: Germany at 707.6 million tonnes CO2 equivalent; lowest: Sweden at -6.74 million tonnes CO2 equivalent.
- Cross-country mean 109.2 million tonnes CO2 equivalent, standard deviation 161.8, coefficient of variation 148.2% across 31 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2013→2024: -15.3% on a constant panel of 31 countries.
How much does Europe still emit in absolute terms? Eurostat dataset env_air_gge reports greenhouse gas emissions relative to the 1990 baseline for 31 reporting countries, with 2024 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 2 786 million tonnes CO2 equivalent. Absolute emission levels determine climate outcomes; intensity metrics do not.
The five highest values in 2024 are recorded by Germany (707.6), Türkiye (517.4), France (325.8), Poland (316.4), Italy (299.4), all expressed in million tonnes CO2 equivalent. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Sweden (-6.74), Malta (2.17), Luxembourg (6.86), Cyprus (8.67), Lithuania (10.5). while the median country reports 47.3 million tonnes CO2 equivalent against a mean of 109.2 million tonnes CO2 equivalent.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 161.8 million tonnes CO2 equivalent, giving a coefficient of variation of 148.2%. The mean sits above the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the upper tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2013 and 2024 the summed value across the 31 countries reporting in both periods moved by -15.3%. The largest relative increases are observed in Latvia (+85.2%), Sweden (+54.4%), Türkiye (+39.1%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Estonia (-44.3%), Denmark (-36.4%), Luxembourg (-36.2%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Lower values are the policy-preferred direction, so the top of the distribution identifies where the burden concentrates: bringing the highest observation down to the median would remove 660.3 million tonnes CO2 equivalent from the European total for that country alone. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset env_air_gge ('Greenhouse gas emissions by source sector'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-06-02. Filter dimensions: src_crf=TOTXMEMO; airpol=GHG; unit=MIO_T. Unit of measure: million tonnes CO2 equivalent. Reference period: 2024. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (31 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.