Top Global Emitters

Joe Turner

Top global industries contributing to climate change:

  1. Mining and extraction of non-renewable resources -- hard to put a figure on their contribution, but not only are the products often burnt inefficiently, producing high levels of greenhouse gases, the process of extraction has a high energy cost and therefore a high level of emissions. The metal mining and refining industry alone is said to produce 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
  2. Electricity generation -- representing around 26% of the total emissions.
  3. Transport -- in total, transport represents about 23% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. Sea freight shipping is reported to emit 1.12 billion tonnes of CO2, about 3.5% of the total CO2 emissions. Aviation produces around 492 million tonnes of CO2 but has other effects due to their position in the atmosphere.
  4. Cement -- production alone produces 5% of total emissions of CO2.
  5. Agriculture -- around 10-12% of total greenhouse gas emissions, 60% of N2O and 50% of CH4 (methane) emissions.
  6. Forestry -- whilst the contribution of emissions from forestry may be relatively low, the contribution of deforestation to climate change is considerable.

Of course, the reality is that these climate costs are intertwined, so that the climate cost of any manufactured product will be a confusing mix of materials, power use, transportation, etc. This is before even considering the additional environmental consequences of inefficiencies in the system, such as waste, fuel leaks and so on.

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  • Posted on April 16, 2008. Listed in:

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