How we measure one person’s climate footprint

What the dashboard shows, where the numbers come from, how current they are, and what they can’t tell you.

The short answer

Take all the CO₂ a country emits in a year from burning coal, oil and gas and from making cement, and divide it by the number of people who live there. That is the average footprint of one person in that country. Worldwide it is about 4.7 tonnes a year; in some oil and gas states it is over 20, in the poorest countries less than a tenth of a tonne. The dashboard shows this for every country, adds the other greenhouse gases and the CO₂ hidden in traded goods, and asks what would happen if everyone lived like the average person in a country you choose.

How we know

CO₂. The Global Carbon Project, an international research collaboration, estimates each country’s CO₂ every year from energy statistics and publishes it as the Global Carbon Budget. The 2025 edition has data to 2024. It also estimates “consumption-based” CO₂: emissions counted in the country where goods are bought rather than where they are made.

Other greenhouse gases and warming. Jones and colleagues estimate each country’s methane and nitrous oxide as well as CO₂ since 1851, and work out how much of today’s global warming each country’s emissions have caused.

One file. Our World in Data combines both with population figures in one public file. We check it every night and download it only when it changes, then calculate the comparisons ourselves.

The budget. The Global Carbon Budget 2025 estimates that from the start of 2026 the world can emit about 170 billion tonnes more CO₂ for an even chance of holding warming to 1.5 °C: about four years at today’s rate. For the “if everyone lived like this” panel we multiply a country’s CO₂ per person by the world’s population, add today’s CO₂ from forest clearing and other land use, and divide the budget by the result.

Personal choices. The savings from single choices are averages from a review of 148 scenarios in 39 studies of rich countries (Wynes and Nicholas 2017). The findings on rich and poor households and on demand are from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2022.

How current each part is

CO₂ per person: yearly, to 2024. The Global Carbon Budget is published every November.
Including imported goods: yearly, usually one year behind.
All greenhouse gases and share of warming: yearly, to 2024.
Budget, studies and IPCC findings: as published, checked 26 October 2026.

What the dashboard can’t tell you

A national average is not your footprint. It includes industry, freight and public services, and it hides the gap between rich and poor: worldwide, the 10% of households with the highest emissions cause 34–45% of household emissions.

Low emissions are not always a choice. In many countries with tiny footprints, millions of people have no electricity; the IPCC finds that ending extreme poverty and energy poverty can be done without significant growth in global emissions.

Worldwide, CO₂ from fossil fuels is known to within about 5%; for some countries it is less certain. Methane, nitrous oxide and land-use emissions are much less certain, and the share of warming depends on how emissions are turned into temperature.

For a personal estimate, use a footprint calculator from your national environment agency.

Credits

Emissions from the Global Carbon Project’s Global Carbon Budget and from Jones et al., combined with population by Our World in Data (CC BY 4.0). We only download and present their public data.