Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions from 1751 to 2010

Thomas A. Boden of Oak Ridge National Laboratory compiled this dataset of fossil fuel CO2 emissions. It provides estimates from 1751 to 2010, derived from historical energy production and trade statistics digitized from publications by Etemad et al. and Mitchell, with post-1950 data from United Nations energy statistics. The dataset includes emissions from coal, brown coal, peat, crude oil, cement production, and gas flaring.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term global carbon budgets based on historical fossil fuel consumption.
• Analyzing national and regional emission trends over 259 years based on the described time series.
• Validating climate policy scenarios using historical baselines for coal, oil, and gas emissions.
• Studying the impact of international fuel trade on national emission inventories based on the described trade data.

Strengths

• Covers a 259-year time range from 1751 to 2010.
• Integrates data from multiple authoritative sources, including U.N. statistics and historical compilations.
• Includes emissions from multiple sources: solid/liquid fuel production, cement manufacturing, and gas flaring.

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; the dataset version is from 2013, so freshness is unverified.
• Data may reflect geographic or temporal bias inherent to the historical source publications.

Provenance

Source

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Thomas A. Boden)

Collection Method

Estimates derived from digitized historical energy production and trade statistics, following procedures in Marland and Rotty (1984) and Boden et al. (1995).

Time Range

1751 - 2010

Geography

Global, regional, and national coverage