Global greenhouse gas emissions in selected countries 2000-2022
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the world's major economies have followed very different paths since the year 2000. The United States, for example, was the world's largest GHG emitter that year, but over the past two decades the North American country has slashed its emissions by roughly 15 percent. Meanwhile, GHG emissions in the European Union were 23 percent below 2000 levels in 2022. In comparison, China's emissions grew my roughly 163 percent between 2000 and 2022 to almost 14 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO₂e), making it the biggest GHG emitter in the world, by far.