Carbon Footprint of Nations: A Global, Trade-Linked Analysis
Open accessAbstract
Processes causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions benefit humans by providing consumer goods and services. This benefit, and hence the responsibility for emissions, varies by purpose or consumption category and is unevenly distributed across and within countries. We quantify greenhouse gas emissions associated with the final consumption of goods and services for 73 nations and 14 aggregate world regions. We analyze the contribution of 8 categories: construction, shelter, food, clothing, mobility, manufactured products, services, and trade. National average per capita footprints vary from 1 tCO2e/y in African countries to approximately 30/y in Luxembourg and the United States. The expenditure elasticity is 0.57. The cross-national expenditure elasticity for just CO2, 0.81, corresponds remarkably well to the cross-sectional elasticities found within nations, suggesting a global relationship between expenditure and emissions that holds across several orders of magnitude difference. On the global level, 72% of greenhouse gas emissions are related to household consumption, 10% to government consumption, and 18% to investments. Food accounts for 20% of GHG emissions, operation and maintenance of residences is 19%, and mobility is 17%. Food and services are more important in developing countries, while mobility and manufactured goods rise fast with income and dominate in rich countries. The importance of public services and manufactured goods has not yet been sufficiently appreciated in policy. Policy priorities hence depend on development status and country-level characteristics.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The challenge of tackling embodied emissions in trade is confronted with various temporal and spatial inequities.
“The challenge of tackling embodied emissions in trade is confronted with various temporal and spatial inequities (see Section 2.3) (14, 25, 145-150).”
From Carbon Leakage, Consumption, and Trade (2022) · cites this paper as [14]
Cites
Energy use in the life cycle of conventional and low-energy buildings: A review article
Sartori, I., & Hestnes, A. G. (2007) · Energy and Buildings · doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2006.07.001 · Cited by 1,284 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Olsen, A., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Sitch, S., et al. (2020) · Earth System Science Data · doi:10.5194/essd-12-3269-2020 · Cited by 2,544 · see citing works
Self-citationLe Quéré, C., Andrew, R. M., Friedlingstein, P., Sitch, S., Hauck, J., Pongratz, J., Pickers, P. A., Korsbakken, J. I., Peters, G. P., Canadell, J. G., et al. (2018) · Earth System Science Data · doi:10.5194/essd-10-2141-2018 · Cited by 1,645 · see citing works
Self-citationInternational comparison of health care carbon footprints
Pichler, P.-P., Jaccard, I. S., Weisz, U., & Weisz, H. (2019) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab19e1 · Cited by 812 · see citing works
Global typology of urban energy use and potentials for an urbanization mitigation wedge
Creutzig, F., Baiocchi, G., Bierkandt, R., Pichler, P.-P., & Seto, K. C. (2015) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1315545112 · Cited by 598 · see citing works
‘Nudging’ hotel guests to reduce food waste as a win–win environmental measure
Kallbekken, S., & Sælen, H. (2013) · Economics Letters · doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2013.03.019 · Cited by 529 · see citing works
Jones, C., & Kammen, D. M. (2014) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es4034364 · Cited by 498 · see citing works
China׳s international trade and air pollution in the United States
Lin, J., Pan, D., Davis, S. J., Zhang, Q., He, K., Wang, C., Streets, D. G., Wuebbles, D. J., & Guan, D. (2014) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1312860111 · Cited by 482 · see citing works
Quantifying Carbon Footprint Reduction Opportunities for U.S. Households and Communities
Jones, C. M., & Kammen, D. M. (2011) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es102221h · Cited by 450 · see citing works
Le Quéré, C., Peters, G. P., Andres, R. J., Andrew, R. M., Boden, T. A., Ciais, P., Friedlingstein, P., Houghton, R. A., Marland, G., Moriarty, R., et al. (2014) · Earth System Science Data · doi:10.5194/essd-6-235-2014 · Cited by 450 · see citing works
Self-citationThe growing importance of scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions from industry
Hertwich, E. G., & Wood, R. (2018) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aae19a · Cited by 350 · see citing works
Self-citationHenders, S., Persson, U. M., & Kastner, T. (2015) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/10/12/125012 · Cited by 347 · see citing works
The green print: Advancement of environmental sustainability in healthcare
Sherman, J. D., Thiel, C., MacNeill, A., Eckelman, M. J., Dubrow, R., Hopf, H., Lagasse, R., Bialowitz, J., Costello, A., Forbes, M., et al. (2020) · Resources, Conservation and Recycling · doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.104882 · Cited by 327 · see citing works
Kyoto and the carbon footprint of nations
Aichele, R., & Felbermayr, G. (2012) · Journal of Environmental Economics and Management · doi:10.1016/j.jeem.2011.10.005 · Cited by 329 · see citing works
Industrial ecology in integrated assessment models
Pauliuk, S., Arvesen, A., Stadler, K., & Hertwich, E. G. (2017) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/nclimate3148 · Cited by 288 · see citing works
Self-citationNational greenhouse-gas accounting for effective climate policy on international trade
Kander, A., Jiborn, M., Moran, D. D., & Wiedmann, T. O. (2015) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/nclimate2555 · Cited by 288 · see citing works
Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production: Patterns, Trends, and Planetary Boundaries
Haberl, H., Erb, K.-H., & Krausmann, F. (2014) · Annual Review of Environment and Resources · doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-121912-094620 · Cited by 275 · see citing works
Embodied carbon emissions in the supply chains of multinational enterprises
Zhang, Z., Guan, D., Wang, R., Meng, J., Zheng, H., Zhu, K., & Du, H. (2020) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/s41558-020-0895-9 · Cited by 235 · see citing works
ICT, openness and CO2 emissions in Africa
Asongu, S. A. (2018) · Environmental Science and Pollution Research · doi:10.1007/s11356-018-1239-4 · Cited by 199 · see citing works
Carbon Leakage, Consumption, and Trade
Grubb, M., Jordan, N. D., Hertwich, E., Neuhoff, K., Das, K., Bandyopadhyay, K. R., van Asselt, H., Sato, M., Wang, R., Pizer, W. A., et al. (2022) · Annual Review of Environment and Resources · doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-120820-053625 · Cited by 176 · see citing works
Self-citationArvesen, A., Bright, R. M., & Hertwich, E. G. (2011) · Energy Policy · doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2011.09.013 · Cited by 67 · see citing works
Self-citationPerspectives: Advertising and climate change – Part of the problem or part of the solution?
Hartmann, P., Marcos, A., Castro, J., & Apaolaza, V. (2023) · International Journal of Advertising · doi:10.1080/02650487.2022.2140963 · Cited by 54 · see citing works
Carbon fueling complex global value chains tripled in the period 1995–2012
Hertwich, E. G. (2020) · Energy Economics · doi:10.1016/j.eneco.2019.104651 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
Self-citationThe impact of implementing a consumption charge on carbon-intensive materials in Europe
Pollitt, H., Neuhoff, K., & Lin, X. (2020) · Climate Policy · doi:10.1080/14693062.2019.1605969 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
- Authors
- Hertwich, E. G., & Peters, G. P.
- Affiliations
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NO)
- Corresponding author
- Hertwich, Edgar G.
- Venue
- Environmental Science & Technology
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2009-06-15
- Volume
- 43
- Issue
- 16
- Pages
- 6414-6420
- ISSN
- 0013-936X (ISSN-L)
- 1520-5851
- OpenAlex
- W1989968173
- Cited by
- 1,715
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 81 · 2025: 114 · 2024: 89 · 2023: 128 · 2022: 153 · 2021: 137 · 2020: 123 · 2019: 112 · 2018: 106 · 2017: 103 · 2016: 100 · 2015: 107 · 2014: 92 · 2013: 84 · 2012: 71
- FWCI
- 55.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Environmental Science & Technology (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- European Commission
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Environmental Impact and Sustainability
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Energy, Environment, Economic Growth
- Keywords
- greenhouse gas emissions, final consumption, expenditure elasticity, household consumption, food emissions, manufactures, public services, international trade, cross-national comparison, developing countries, climate policy
- MeSH terms
- Carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Commerce, Regression Analysis, Greenhouse Effect, Uncertainty, Internationality
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
