The transport sector is responsible for the highest increase of emissions, even if most of it refers to the period until 2005. The building sector followed an opposite trend: emissions from housing dropped by 34% over the period covered.

Global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels combustion and processes decreased by 5.1% in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Among the world’s largest CO₂ emitters, only China has shown an increase in emissions in 2020 (+1.5%) while for all others figures go downwards: in the EU27 by 10.6%, more sharply than in the United States, Japan, India and Russia.

EU27 total fossil CO₂ emissions had already decreased over the past two decades. In 2019 they were 23.2% lower than in 1990 and 20.7% lower than in 2005. The EU27 share of the global total emissions decreased from 8.5% to 7.3% between 2015 and 2020.

Emission data for fossil CO₂ are available in EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) for each country in the world, from 1970 to 2020. At COP26 in Glasgow, the JRC co-organised eleven side events, launched new scientific tools and presented several reports.