The annual Global Carbon Budget projects fossil carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of 36.8 billion tonnes in 2023, up 1.1% from 2022.

Regional trends vary dramatically. Emissions in 2023 are projected to increase in India (8.2%) and China (4.0%), and decline in the EU (-7.4%), the USA (-3.0%) and the rest of the world (-0.4%).

Global emissions from coal (1.1%), oil (1.5%) and gas (0.5%) are all projected to increase.

About half of all CO2 emitted continues to be absorbed by land and ocean “sinks”, with the rest remaining in the atmosphere where it causes climate change.

In the decade 2013–2022, territorial fossil CO2 emissions decreased significantly (at the 95 % confidence level) in 26 countries/economic entities whose economies grew significantly: Belgium, Brazil, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the USA, and Zimbabwe (updated from Le Quéré et al., 2019). Altogether, these 26 countries emitted 2.7 Gt C yr−1 (10.0 Gt CO2 yr−1) on average over the last decade, about 28% of world CO2 fossil emissions.

EU cement emissions are based on available year-to-date data from three of the largest producers, Germany, Poland, and Spain.

Extreme fires in Canada were the largest contributor to the anomaly in 2023, with emissions reaching 0.5– 0.8 Gt C yr−1 or 527 %–874 % above the 2013–2022 average (0.1 Gt C yr−1 in both products) and 450 %–709 % above the 2003–2022 average (0.1 Gt C yr−1 in both products).

The negative effect of climate is the strongest in most of South America, Central America, the southwest USA, central Europe, the western Sahel, southern Africa, Southeast Asia and southern China, and eastern Australia (Fig. 11b). Globally, over the 2013–2022 period, climate change reduces the land sink by 0.68 ± 0.62 Gt C yr−1 (20 % of SLAND).

In 2022, the largest absolute contributions to global fossil CO2 emissions were from China (31 %), the USA (14 %), India (8 %), and the EU27 (7 %). These four regions account for 59 % of global fossil CO2 emissions,

Growth rates for these countries from 2021 to 2022 were 0.5 % (China), 0.5 % (USA), −1.6 % (EU27), and 5.8 % (India), with +0.9 % for the rest of the world. The per capita fossil CO2 emissions in 2022 were 1.3 t C per person per year for the globe and were 4.1 (USA), 2.2 (China), 1.7 (EU27), and 0.5 (India) t C per person per year for the four highest emitters (Fig. 5).

Cumulative fossil CO2 emissions for 1850–2022 were 477 ±
25 Gt C, including the cement carbonation sink (Fig. 3, Ta- ble 8, with all cumulative numbers rounded to the nearest 5 Gt C). In this period, 46 % of global fossil CO2 emissions came from coal, 35 % from oil, 15 % from natural gas, 3 % from decomposition of carbonates, and 1 % from flaring.

Over the entire period 1850–2022, US cumulative emissions amounted to 115 Gt C (24 % of world total), the EU’s to 80 Gt C (17 %), China’s to 70GtC (15%), and India’s to 15GtC (3%).

Global fossil CO2 emissions were slightly higher, 0.9 %, in 2022 than in 2021, with an increase of less than 0.1 Gt C to reach 9.9 ± 0.5 Gt C (including the 0.2 Gt C cement carbona- tion sink) in 2022 (Fig. 5), distributed among coal (41 %), oil (32 %), natural gas (21 %), cement (4 %), flaring (1 %), and others (< 1 %). Compared to the previous year, 2022 emis- sions from coal and oil increased by 1.6% and 3.2%, re- spectively, while emissions from gas and cement decreased by 2.2 % and 5.1 %, respectively.

Global increases in 2023 emissions per fuel type are projected to be +1.1 % (range −0.1 % to 2.4 %) for coal, +1.5 % (range 0.6 % to 2.3 %) for oil, +0.5 % (range −0.9 % to 1.8 %) for natural gas, and 0.8 % (range −0.7 % to 2.4 %) for cement.

For China, projected fossil emissions in 2023 are expected to increase by 4 % (range 1.9 % to 6.1 %) compared with 2022 emissions.