Return to All Country CREDIT DEBIT introduction

  1. Explanation of the approach to historic emissions and division of the carbon budget
  2. The global carbon budget
  3. The country carbon budget chart
  4. The individual elements of the carbon budget chart

a) budget boxes; global totals & country shares
b) per capita country emissions over time
c) gross country emissions over time
d) share calculation methodology

e) easy visualization of CREDIT:DEBIT

Note on share calculation

On a year-by-year basis for the past (1750-2013) each country’s equal per capita share of past emissions is derived from: -

a) Compiling the estimates of each country’s population for each year 1750-2013 as paths, but not integrals (source primarily World Bank and various);

b) Compiling the estimates of each country’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning for each year 1750-2013 as paths but also as integrals (source primarily CDIAC);

c) Summing the CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning for each country to totals for each year 1750- 2013, but also as an integral i.e. as an individual total for each country, summing all years 1750- 2013 – giving an overall total of 376 Gt C;

d) Adding and summing a global estimate of the 'bio-carbon' or non-fossil CO2 emissions from Land Use Change (LUC) for each year, giving an integral of 111 Gt C 1750-2013;

e) Summing both the fossil and the non-fossil CO2 emissions globally for all years 1750-2013 that are also then summed to a global total integral of emissions of 487 Gt C; and this is the composite global carbon budget for the period ‘the PAST’ 1750-2013;

f) The emissions per capita of each country are calculated by dividing the CO2 emissions for each year by the population for each year (as paths only and not as integrals);

g) Each country’s ‘emissions share’ of the global emissions total is calculated as being equal to their annual share of the global population total as that total emerged, 1750-2013;

h) For example, Norway’s share of global emissions over the period 1750-2013 was 433.5 Mt C or 0.09% of the total global carbon budget for that period, reflecting its changing share of global population over that period.

Return to All Country CREDIT DEBIT introduction