World Bank indicator EN.GHG.CO2.IC.MT.CE.AR5 reports 2024 carbon-dioxide emissions from industrial combustion for 193 countries and economies. The 217-economy master frame contains 24 source-missing rows. The reported-economy sum is 6,420.7734 Mt CO₂e, the unweighted mean is 33.2683, and the median is 1.6693 Mt CO₂e.
China has the largest reported value at 2,793.0196 Mt CO₂e, followed by India at 689.1521, the United States at 443.9249, and the Russian Federation at 290.6298. China alone represents about 43.5% of the sum of reported country values.
Table of Contents
Industrial combustion means fuel burned in manufacturing and construction
The indicator covers fuel-combustion emissions assigned to IPCC 2006 category 1.A.2, Manufacturing Industries and Construction. It is an energy-sector category and does not mean all carbon dioxide associated with industrial activity.
The official EDGAR sector gallery labels IPCC 1.A.2 as combustion for manufacturing. The category captures direct CO₂ released when fuels are burned to provide energy for manufacturing and construction activities.
Industrial combustion is separate from industrial-process emissions
Industrial-process emissions arise from physical or chemical transformations involved in producing materials and products, such as cement, metals, and chemicals. Those emissions are classified separately from fuel combustion.
The World Bank provides a separate industrial-process CO₂ series. The present analysis stays with EN.GHG.CO2.IC.MT.CE.AR5 and does not combine the two sector boundaries.
The unit is Mt CO₂e
Mt CO₂e means million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent. The series uses the AR5 greenhouse-gas accounting framework. Because carbon dioxide is the reference gas with a global-warming-potential value of one, the CO₂-equivalent value for CO₂ itself is numerically on the same mass scale as CO₂.
That does not mean other greenhouse gases can be interpreted the same way. Methane and nitrous oxide require their own warming-potential conversion factors when expressed in CO₂e.
China reports 2,793.02 Mt CO₂e
The largest 2024 values are China at 2,793.02 Mt CO₂e, India 689.15, the United States 443.92, the Russian Federation 290.63, and Indonesia 186.07. Japan, Iran, Viet Nam, Saudi Arabia, and Germany complete the top ten.
These are absolute national totals. They are not divided by population, manufacturing output, GDP, or industrial energy consumption. The ranking therefore measures scale rather than industrial efficiency.
| True rank | Country or economy | 2024 industrial-combustion CO₂ |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 2,793.0196 Mt CO₂e |
| 2 | India | 689.1521 Mt CO₂e |
| 3 | United States | 443.9249 Mt CO₂e |
| 4 | Russian Federation | 290.6298 Mt CO₂e |
| 5 | Indonesia | 186.0665 Mt CO₂e |
| 6 | Japan | 161.0419 Mt CO₂e |
| 7 | Iran, Islamic Rep. | 135.7842 Mt CO₂e |
| 8 | Viet Nam | 111.6290 Mt CO₂e |
| 9 | Saudi Arabia | 102.9703 Mt CO₂e |
| 10 | Germany | 84.6977 Mt CO₂e |
| 11 | Brazil | 84.6892 Mt CO₂e |
| 12 | United Arab Emirates | 75.2657 Mt CO₂e |
| 13 | Turkiye | 75.0248 Mt CO₂e |
| 14 | Canada | 65.8180 Mt CO₂e |
| 16 | Thailand | 50.0135 Mt CO₂e |
The top five account for about 68.6% of the reported sum
Of the 6,420.77 Mt CO₂e summed across 193 reported economies, China accounts for 43.5%, the top two for 54.2%, and the top three for 61.1%. The top five together account for 68.6%.
The top ten reach 77.9% and the top twenty 87.1%. Industrial-combustion CO₂ is therefore highly concentrated in a relatively small group of large industrial economies. The percentages refer to the reported-economy sum, not an official world total.
The median is 1.67 Mt CO₂e
The median across 193 observations is 1.6693 Mt CO₂e. The first quartile is 0.2306 and the third quartile 10.2144. The simple mean of 33.2683 is roughly twenty times the median.
That gap reflects a strongly right-skewed distribution. A few very large emitters raise the mean substantially, so the median and distribution bands are more informative for describing a typical reported economy.
Eighty-two reported economies are below 1 Mt CO₂e
There is 1 exact zero, 34 positive observations below 0.1 Mt CO₂e, and 47 observations from 0.1 to under 1. Together those groups contain 82 economies.
Another 62 observations are from 1 to under 10, 33 from 10 to under 50, 12 from 50 to under 200, and only 4 are at least 200 Mt CO₂e.
| 2024 industrial-combustion CO₂ band | Economies | Share of 193 reported values |
|---|---|---|
| Exactly 0 | 1 | 0.5% |
| >0 to under 0.1 | 34 | 17.6% |
| 0.1 to under 1 | 47 | 24.4% |
| 1 to under 10 | 62 | 32.1% |
| 10 to under 50 | 33 | 17.1% |
| 50 to under 200 | 12 | 6.2% |
| 200 or more | 4 | 2.1% |
Reported zero and source-missing are different states
Only 1 numeric observation is exactly 0.0000 Mt CO₂e. It is a reported zero and remains in the statistics as zero.
| Economy with reported zero | 2024 value |
|---|---|
| Congo, Dem. Rep. | 0.0000 Mt CO₂e |
By contrast, 24 rows in the 217-economy frame have no numeric source observation. They are excluded from the mean, median, map, and reported-economy sum rather than being filled with zero.
Twenty-four no-data economies are not zero emitters
The source-missing group includes American Samoa, Andorra, Channel Islands, Curacao, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Guam, Isle of Man, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Monaco, Montenegro, San Marino, Serbia, South Sudan, Tuvalu, and several other small economies or territories.
No data means the source did not provide a usable 2024 numeric value for this indicator. It does not establish that industrial-combustion CO₂ emissions were zero.
| Source-missing economy | 2024 status |
|---|---|
| American Samoa | No data |
| Andorra | No data |
| Channel Islands | No data |
| Curacao | No data |
| Faroe Islands | No data |
| Gibraltar | No data |
| Guam | No data |
| Isle of Man | No data |
| Kosovo | No data |
| Liechtenstein | No data |
| Marshall Islands | No data |
| Micronesia, Fed. Sts. | No data |
| Monaco | No data |
| Montenegro | No data |
| Naoero | No data |
| Northern Mariana Islands | No data |
| San Marino | No data |
| Serbia | No data |
| Sint Maarten (Dutch part) | No data |
| South Sudan | No data |
| St. Martin (French part) | No data |
| Tuvalu | No data |
| Virgin Islands (U.S.) | No data |
| West Bank and Gaza | No data |
Small positive values remain distinct from zero
The smallest positive observations include Dominica at 0.0057 Mt CO₂e, the British Virgin Islands at 0.0063, St. Vincent and the Grenadines at 0.0090, St. Kitts and Nevis at 0.0092, and Kiribati at 0.0097.
The table retains four decimal places so that genuinely small positive emissions do not appear to be zero after aggressive rounding.
| Country or economy | Small positive observation |
|---|---|
| Dominica | 0.0057 Mt CO₂e |
| British Virgin Islands | 0.0063 Mt CO₂e |
| St. Vincent and the Grenadines | 0.0090 Mt CO₂e |
| St. Kitts and Nevis | 0.0092 Mt CO₂e |
| Kiribati | 0.0097 Mt CO₂e |
| Grenada | 0.0120 Mt CO₂e |
| Turks and Caicos Islands | 0.0156 Mt CO₂e |
| Sao Tome and Principe | 0.0179 Mt CO₂e |
| Bermuda | 0.0183 Mt CO₂e |
| Tonga | 0.0207 Mt CO₂e |
| St. Lucia | 0.0210 Mt CO₂e |
| Eritrea | 0.0243 Mt CO₂e |
| Antigua and Barbuda | 0.0243 Mt CO₂e |
| Cayman Islands | 0.0254 Mt CO₂e |
| Belize | 0.0261 Mt CO₂e |
Industrial combustion is different from power-sector CO₂
When an industrial facility purchases electricity from the grid, the direct CO₂ from generating that electricity is generally assigned to the power-industry sector rather than directly to industrial combustion 1.A.2. This series is focused on fuels burned within manufacturing and construction.
It should therefore not be treated as the full electricity-related carbon footprint of industrial consumption or as a Scope 2 emissions measure.
It also excludes upstream fuel-production emissions
Emissions from extracting, processing, transporting, and refining fuels can be assigned to fuel-exploitation, refinery, or transformation sectors rather than manufacturing combustion. The present indicator does not aggregate all upstream supply-chain emissions.
This distinction also separates territorial sector accounting from consumption-based carbon-footprint accounting, which can assign emissions through international supply chains in a different way.
The indicator is much narrower than total national CO₂
The World Bank total CO₂ series spans a broader set of sectors including power, industry, buildings, transport, and other fuel-related activities. Industrial combustion is only one component of national CO₂ emissions.
In some countries, power generation or transport can exceed industrial combustion by a wide margin. This map should not be used as a substitute for a total national carbon-emissions ranking.
A common 2024 year makes time comparison straightforward
All 193 numeric observations refer to 2024. Unlike a latest-value dataset that mixes years across countries, the rank order and summary statistics here compare the same reference year.
A common year does not eliminate inventory uncertainty. EDGAR-style emission inventories combine activity data, fuel use, emission factors, and sector classifications rather than directly measuring every source continuously.
Large absolute emissions do not prove low industrial efficiency
A country with a very large manufacturing sector can have high absolute emissions even when emissions per unit of production are relatively low. A small industrial economy can have a low total while being more carbon intensive.
Comparing efficiency requires a denominator such as manufacturing value added, physical output, or industrial energy consumption. Per-capita emissions are also a separate question.
The reported-economy sum is not labeled the official world total
Adding the 193 numeric values gives 6,420.7734 Mt CO₂e. Because 24 master economies are missing and official aggregates can apply different geographic and aggregation rules, that sum is presented only as the total of reported country observations.
For a formal world total, an official World Bank or EDGAR aggregate with documented coverage is preferable.
Source and calculation notes
The source is World Bank World Development Indicators series EN.GHG.CO2.IC.MT.CE.AR5, based on EDGAR Community GHG Database, JRC European Commission and IEA data. The analysis uses 193 numeric observations from 2024, preserves the reported zero, and excludes 24 source-missing rows from numeric calculations.
All 193 reported country codes are matched to geographic centroids for the map, producing a 100% match. Symmetric-log color normalization makes the wide range visible without changing the underlying data values.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are industrial-combustion CO₂ and industrial-process CO₂ the same?
No. Industrial combustion covers fuel burned in IPCC 1.A.2 manufacturing and construction, while industrial processes cover emissions from production reactions themselves.
What does Mt CO₂e mean for CO₂?
It means million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent. Because CO₂ is the reference gas with GWP 1, its CO₂e value is on the same numeric mass scale as CO₂.
Are the 24 source-missing economies counted as zero?
No. They remain no data and are distinct from the single economy with an actual reported value of zero.
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