EU cut GHG emissions by 32% between 1990 and 2020

23 / 08 / 2022

By Marwa Nassar - -

The European Union (EU) managed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 32 percent standing at 1546 million tons of CO₂-equivalents between 1990 and 2020.

This was published by Eurostat in a Statistics Explained article on climate change and its driving forces providing a long-term analysis and in-depth background.

This Statistics Explained article on climate change includes a detailed analysis of eight sectors covering industry, transportation, agriculture, households and waste management.

Data produced by the European Environment Agency (EEA) and re-published by Eurostat show that GHG emissions have been declining in most sectors, except in fuel combustion in transport, including international aviation. This sector increased by 50 million tons of CO₂-equivalents (CO₂-eq) (+7%) in 2020 compared with 1990.

GHG emission inventories are taken from Eurostat’s dataset Greenhouse gas emissions by source sector. This dataset is originally produced and published by the European Environment Agency (EEA). The EEA GHG emission inventory data is accessible through the EEA greenhouse gas data viewer.

Source sectors as presented here are groupings of the more detailed classification used in greenhouse gas emission inventories, called common reporting format (CRF).

The greenhouse gas emissions are the result of human activities which cause anthropogenic climate change, and the EU is an ambitious contributor to the global efforts to fight climate change and reduce GHG emissions, being committed to being climate neutral by 2050.

Over all source sectors, the EU managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1546 million tons of CO₂-equivalents between 1990 and 2020. The largest absolute decrease (-657 million tons of CO₂-eq) in emissions occurred in the fuel combustion by energy industries, which mainly produce electricity, heat and derived fuels, followed by manufacturing industries and construction (-322 million tons) and households, commerce, institutions and others (-215 million tons). In terms of relative change, these three sectors registered a 46%, 44% and 29% drop, respectively, in emissions in 2020 compared with 1990.

Fugitive emissions from fuels show the largest relative change in 2020 compared with 1990 at -59%, but the share in the overall total is much less (1.8% of the total GHG emissions).