Greenhouse gas emissions from transport
- Eurostat dataset
- env_air_gge
- Reference period
- 2024
- Unit of measure
- thousand tonnes CO2 equivalent
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2024): 804 764 thousand tonnes CO2 equivalent.
- Highest value: Germany at 144 866 thousand tonnes CO2 equivalent; lowest: Malta at 787.7 thousand tonnes CO2 equivalent.
- Cross-country mean 30 103 thousand tonnes CO2 equivalent, standard deviation 39 794, coefficient of variation 132.2% across 31 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2013→2024: +6.9% on a constant panel of 31 countries.
Why has transport resisted European decarbonisation? Eurostat dataset env_air_gge reports greenhouse gas emissions from transport for 31 reporting countries, with 2024 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 804 764 thousand tonnes CO2 equivalent. Transport is the only major emitting sector whose emissions have not fallen below 1990 levels.
The five highest values in 2024 are recorded by Germany (144 866), France (122 356), Italy (113 282), Türkiye (102 871), Spain (90 374), all expressed in thousand tonnes CO2 equivalent. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Malta (787.7), Iceland (940.5), Cyprus (2 103), Estonia (2 702), Latvia (2 869). The ratio between the highest and the lowest observation is 183.91, while the median country reports 13 323 thousand tonnes CO2 equivalent against a mean of 30 103 thousand tonnes CO2 equivalent.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 39 794 thousand tonnes CO2 equivalent, giving a coefficient of variation of 132.2%. 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 +6.9%. The largest relative increases are observed in Poland (+55.1%), Romania (+50.9%), Türkiye (+49.6%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Luxembourg (-38.8%), Netherlands (-21.0%), Norway (-20.5%). 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 131 544 thousand 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=CRF1A3; airpol=GHG; unit=THS_T. Unit of measure: thousand 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.