Transportation emissions worldwide - statistics & facts
Transportation plays a vital role in people’s daily lives and the global economy, but it is also contributing massively to climate change. Mobility from land, air, and sea is still heavily reliant on polluting internal combustion engines (ICEs) and produced roughly 8.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO₂e) in 2023. This accounted for approximately 16 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that year, making transportation the second-largest source of emissions worldwide.
The majority of global transportation-related emissions come from road vehicles, which alone produced 12 percent of total global GHG emissions in 2021. This makes road transportation the second-largest contributor to global emissions, behind coal-fired power. The primary source of transportation emissions are light-duty vehicles, i.e., passenger cars, whose emissions have increased by an average of one percent per year since 2010 to more than 3.5 GtCO₂.
Rising transportation emissions
Global transportation CO₂ emissions increased by four percent in 2023, with emissions from the sector continuing to rebound from the unprecedented COVID-19-related reductions observed in 2020. Overall, CO₂ emissions from transportation have increased by almost 80 percent since 1990, and now account for more than 20 percent of global CO₂ emissions from burning fossil fuels. While transportation emissions vary by region, they have increased at a much faster rate in developing regions when compared to North America and Europe, owing to growing incomes and the increased ownership of cars. China, for example, has seen emissions from this sector more than triple since the turn of the century. Nevertheless, the U.S. remains the sectors biggest carbon polluter by far.The majority of global transportation-related emissions come from road vehicles, which alone produced 12 percent of total global GHG emissions in 2021. This makes road transportation the second-largest contributor to global emissions, behind coal-fired power. The primary source of transportation emissions are light-duty vehicles, i.e., passenger cars, whose emissions have increased by an average of one percent per year since 2010 to more than 3.5 GtCO₂.
