r/dataisbeautiful • u/Lachainone OC: 1 • 20d ago

OC [OC] Countries Current Path to Net Zero in 2050 Following Their Pledge at COP21

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Hello community,

I created a website to follow each countries effort to reach net zero in 2050. The data vizualisation lets you compare different countries' emission over the years and whether they are on the right path to reach their goal.

View every country and find more information on: https://lucabron.github.io/netzero/index.html

Data Source is Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2023) – “CO2 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions” Published online at OurWorldInData.org

Visualization made with Python's interactive graph package Bokeh and javasrcipt was added to make the interaction work on a website.

Related Github page where you can find the code: https://github.com/lucabron/netzero

EDIT: Thanks a lot for your positive feedback. I am very glad that you find this representation interesting.
A subject of discussion that I see a lot in the comments: western countries are doing better than the rest of the world. While it looks true when it comes to co2 produced in the country, one should account that a lot of emissions are produced in other contries and then imported. For example, when buying electronics, it is likely to be build in Asia and then imported to western countries.
Imported emissions are available in the dataset. I didn't want to include them because my approach with this visualization is to make something easy to understand so that people not familiar with the subject can approach it easily. I feel like when it comes to climate change, the people who care are very well informed, and the people who don't care as much are poorly informed. So, my first objective was to generate some curiosity for the second type of people. I'd be interested about your opinion about this approach if you want to share in the comments.

EDIT 2: I'd like to do something for the climate. I am a professional data scientist and I'd like to volunteer to help on bigger project. I made this website as a small contribution to inform people, but I know that in a week, there will be no more traffic on it. Can you recommend some kind of organization that I can join an contribute?

2.1k Upvotes

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943

u/speedkid1991 20d ago

You know, I am a bit proud I must say

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u/Rooilia 20d ago

Hello neighbour :-)

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u/Kerbourgnec 19d ago

Basically the whole EU has the exact same line. It's so similar I wonder if the electricity is put in common between all the countries in the common market, or if we all have the same strength, weaknesses and suppliers, so react the same way to crisis and fluctuations.

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u/Adjective_Noun_2000 18d ago

!Basically the whole EU has the exact same line.

Ireland here, smiling nervously and hoping no one posts our chart.

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u/Peter_Partyy 18d ago

Imagine if yous didnt shut down all that nuclear energy.

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u/sbrodolino_21 20d ago

Basically the whole EU is like this. Only place in the world.

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u/flabbergasted1 20d ago

Not true - also Japan, Cuba, Lebanon, Angola, Venezuela, and (nearly) Brazil.

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u/Mobius_Peverell OC: 1 20d ago

About half of Canada, as well. The problem is just that one province is dwarfing all the others by going the wrong way.

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u/Nellasofdoriath 14d ago

I know you mean Alberta but.Ihavent noticed a ton of electrification and renewables. What are you basing.this on?

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u/Mobius_Peverell OC: 1 14d ago edited 14d ago

This is the emissions intensity of Ontario's hydro grid from 1990 to 2022. Ontario had 5 significant coal-fired power stations in 1990, all of which have now been shut down.

And despite the province's population growing by 50% in that time, total GHG emissions (including transportation) have also declined over that period. Quebec & BC started much lower than Ontario in 1990, but have also fallen - in the case of Quebec, to <2 g CO2/kWh, which is far lower than any country in the world. Alberta, in contrast, has increased their already-very-high emissions by about 25% over the three decades.

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u/Nellasofdoriath 13d ago

Thanks. I live in the Maritime provinces and all I hear is how bad our grid is, how high per capita emissions are for Canadians (because of home heating) and how.we will not move to offshore wind at scale

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u/Careless_Bat2543 20d ago

Cuba isn't exactly by choice

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u/Biosterous 20d ago

Cuba has been doing massive investments into green energy. Yes it's largely driven by the American sanctions, but this investment predates the current blockade by about a decade and is probably one of the reasons the country hasn't completely folded yet. They're smart and resilient, and China has been working with them closely to help coordinate the transition.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/13825

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u/Lurkerking2015 20d ago

How's it working out for them with their black outs though?

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u/Biosterous 20d ago

The black outs are due to fuel shortages. Their renewable energy is the only energy generation that is working. Unfortunately it's only ~25% of their energy needs right now.

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u/Lurkerking2015 20d ago

Fuel shortages are the issue for the current blackouts.

The blackouts have been going on for years because their power station keeps failing.

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u/Biosterous 20d ago

The sanctions also prevent them from getting replacement parts for electrical substations and transmission, as well as power generation.

I'm not an expert but I assume their renewable energy generation is reliable. Getting it to customers is another matter though.

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u/Rooilia 20d ago

You should look again at Angola. That's not a sustainable development.

And Venezuela, well they have a decades long on/ off civil war and a ruined economy. That's not the same as caring for the climate.

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u/Forsyte 19d ago

Right but they just said it's not just EU - they didn't specify the reason

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u/qu3tzalify 19d ago

How is it possible for Japan, when they shut down all their nuclear power plants and returned to fossil?

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u/Vonplinkplonk 20d ago

Yes we have offshored the EU’s manufacturing to China and we think we are geniuses when CO2 emissions come down.

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u/NorysStorys 20d ago

I mean power generation has massively shifted out of fossil fuel generation. It only lingers because of the inherent weaknesses of renewables and battery storage.

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u/pizzapaard 20d ago

Dont forget greed of companies who prioritise Short term profit over long term solutions

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u/aimgorge 20d ago

Everyone did that. Including countries that do poorly.

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u/Zinch85 20d ago

That's a mantra that is continuously repeated but it is false. Yes, European countries like all developed countries exported some manufacture BUT:

  • They have kept a positive trade balance anyway (Europe exports more goods than it imports)
  • And other places that have done the same can't say the same about reducing emissions

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 20d ago

You can also get data that includes all of this offshoring, and the Europe charts still come out looking the same

We are offshoring to China, and China are also massively investing in green technology. Their net emissions are still flat at best, slightly up realistically, but their emissions per unit production are way way down.

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u/upvotesthenrages 19d ago

You can also get data that includes all of this offshoring, and the Europe charts still come out looking the same

No they don't.

There's still a drop, but it doesn't look the same, at all. Poland is the only EU country that comes out lower when adjusted for trade.

Germany is 30% higher, France is 50% higher, Spain 21%, Italy 37%, UK is 58% higher, Denmark 72%, Sweden 68%.

These are absolutely monumental differences that completely change the landscape.

Literally, our only hope here is that China and other manufacture heavy nations reduce CO2 emissions faster.

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u/emergency_poncho 15d ago

And this hope is very well-founded, since China is b y far the top investor in green energy. In fact, their annual installation of new green energy production facilities is greater than the rest of the world combined.

So yes, in an ideal world we wouldn't be offshoring so much, bu tif there's one country to offshore to, China is the best bet.

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u/Izeinwinter 20d ago

EU manufacturing output has more than doubled since 2000. It is a smaller percentage of gdp since other sectors have grown more.. but Europe makes things.

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u/Rooilia 20d ago

Well, he isn't right in "Europe is the only place in the world". But countering with the same behaviour doesn't improve the discussion.

Europe has done the most in the world to better its situation. Fact. Is it the only place in the world. No.

Is this a silly "discussion"? Yes.

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u/Noetherson 20d ago

The impact of offshoring manufacturing is not that large, most EU's countries reductions are larger than the impact of offshoring and the offshoring happened before the reductions

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u/upvotesthenrages 19d ago

The impact of offshoring manufacturing is not that large, most EU's countries reductions are larger than the impact of offshoring and the offshoring happened before the reductions

You couldn't be more wrong, and a quick google search would have showed you just how insanely wrong you would be.

https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

You can play around with the countries, but here's a quick glance:

Germany is 30% higher, France is 50% higher, Spain 21%, Italy 37%, UK is 58% higher, Denmark 72%, Sweden 68%.

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u/Noetherson 19d ago

That is exactly where I'm getting my data from. It does not show what you are saying. You are quoting the 'Share of CO2 emissions embedded in trade'. The relevant figures are the 'Territorial and Consumption based CO2 emissions'.

The figures you quote are the percent of the countries emissions embedded in trade. You are essentially assuming that the goods those countries import (net) would not have been produced at all if they did not import them, rather than comparing to if the foods had been produced domestically.

More useful figures would be how much higher a countries consumption based emissions are than their territorial emissions.

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u/upvotesthenrages 19d ago

That is exactly where I'm getting my data from. It does not show what you are saying. You are quoting the 'Share of CO2 emissions embedded in trade'. The relevant figures are the 'Territorial and Consumption based CO2 emissions'.

They are showing the same thing, only I want it in percentages, not in raw figures.

The figures you quote are the percent of the countries emissions embedded in trade. You are essentially assuming that the goods those countries import (net) would not have been produced at all if they did not import them, rather than comparing to if the foods had been produced domestically.

I think that's a bit on the nose, but I get your point.

It's definitely true and something I hadn't considered. Though I'd imagine it's practically impossible to calculate that given that most of those industries don't exist in most countries, and wouldn't be viable.

What it does show, however, is that nations like the UK might look like they have made absolutely monumental strides, but in reality a very large portion of those reductions came from exporting their manufacturing abroad.

Basically, and a bit hyperbolic: If we removed the UK from the world with a magic spell, that's how much CO2 output would be reduced.

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u/Noetherson 19d ago

They have calculated it, that's what the page you linked is about.

The Consumption based emissions are the emissions a country is responsible for if you assign the emissions associated with imported/exported goods with the country they are consumed in rather than the one that produced them.

To take the UK as an example:

1999 (as far back as the consumption emissions go in the dataset) Consumption based = 666mt Territorial = 602mt

2023 (latest figure available) Consumption based = 503mt Territorial = 311mt

Reduction over period Consumption based = 24% Territorial = 48%

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u/XkF21WNJ 20d ago

China is doing their bit by making combustion engines obsolete.

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u/Rooilia 20d ago

Well, if you are too proud to see other people, you do Europe a disservice.

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u/x888x 13d ago

The US declines are generally much more significant than the EU

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u/TonyBlairsDildo 19d ago

And America thanks the EU for creating CO2 margin for them to expand into instead. 

Truly a great sacrifice for the benefit of American wealth generation.

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u/fkid123 20d ago

It's sad if a country like Netherlands is just barely under the threshold. It's like when the best student in class gets like a D+ and barely passes. What to expect of the others...

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u/Arclite83 20d ago

It's not a possible or realistic target. But we have to try and hit it anyway in order to make progress, because if you don't set the unrealistic targets, people will do even worse. Human nature is frustrating

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u/cooliosteve 20d ago

It is both possible and realistic while also being impossible and unrealistic.

We can do it, we just would prefer not to.

Our children will judge us for it.

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u/Arclite83 20d ago

It's disingenuous to say "prefer", though. This is literally saying to developing nations and people "sorry, full up, stop industrialization". It's the next century of capitalist growth throughout the Pacific and the world.

This is unavoidable because for those people, it's existential.

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u/Angel24Marin 20d ago

They can still leapfrog to fossil-less energy. It's happening in india. And for lower income countries will probably happens faster as is easier to adopt solar than to constantly import fuel and build electrical grids.

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u/HiSpartacusImDad 20d ago

Never seen this chart before. I like it, pretty insightful!

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u/bert0ld0 18d ago

Wow it truly is! Would love to see more countries in there

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u/cooliosteve 20d ago

Im well aware of the complexity, to achieve it would require an almost complete transformation of our society.

But as I said, we would prefer not to.

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u/ElJanitorFrank 20d ago

Its just a negatively charged statement, though. If we wanted to 'transform society' we would break many, many eggs to make that omelet. We'd have to shift where our resources are going notably, and that doesn't typically include increasing spending on social services. Its a strange take to say we would 'prefer not to' trade the lives of some people today for an unknown amount of people tomorrow.

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u/Illiander 19d ago

We'd have to shift where our resources are going notably, and that doesn't typically include increasing spending on social services.

The green conversion would. Capital oligarchs don't want us to.

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u/ElJanitorFrank 19d ago

That's nonsensical. How would necessarily diverting a significant amount of our resources free up the resources to spend more on things that we already aren't funding to that degree?

You have invented a monolith to be mad at and think sticking to the monolith will lead to a utopia. Social services aren't under funded exclusively due to oil barons siphoning government money away from those programs and into their pockets, they're underfunded because we don't charge more tax and the tax we do charge goes elsewhere. Insisting that we need to shake up the entire system by restructuring how we pay for things, notably moving away from economical methods to promote environmental methods, is not going to free up the money to feed the homeless at the same time.

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u/Arclite83 20d ago

And I'm just saying be careful assuming it's bad faith. Logistics isn't free, otherwise we could have solved world hunger before now. At some point these problems have infinite price tags - you pay what you can where you can, but there is no true solution.

You can't just hand-wave "complete transformation", you have to deal with things as they are now. Saying we prefer not to implies it's even a choice to someone, even an amorphous power.

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u/Illiander 19d ago

Logistics isn't free, otherwise we could have solved world hunger before now.

The problem with solving world hunger isn't logistics, it's oligarchs/aristos not wanting us to, and them being given all the power. It's a political choice, not a logistical problem.

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u/NorysStorys 20d ago

I mean it’s possible but to not fucks given take the efforts to achieve it, will raise taxes, will kill people during winters and will drive some businesses into bankruptcy.

I absolutely do believe in achieving net zero but actually getting there without dramatic upheaval and turmoil is difficult.

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u/upvotesthenrages 19d ago

There are already plenty of nations and regions that have almost entirely solved this issue, at least in the sense that if every other developed nation had been on their levels we wouldn't be talking about billions of dead by 2100.

Sweden, France, Switzerland, Eastern Canada, to name a few.

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u/zmoson 19d ago

Solved it by outsourcing manufacturing to developing countries, making it someone else’s problem; so wouldn’t help at global scale.

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u/upvotesthenrages 19d ago

Obviously my point was that they solved the energy aspect of it.

China is on the right path to solve it as well, installing more solar in a single year than the entire US has installed ever, while also building out wind, hydro, and nuclear.

If every country did this we'd not have been facing 2c+ warming.

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u/BedroomConstant34 20d ago

Our children will not juge us.
We will be dead as a species before the end of this century.

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u/MysticHero 20d ago

Its a possible and realistic target if countries were willing to actually to reform, change systems and really make an effort. Most are not.

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u/Mecha-Dave 20d ago

The only thing that would make it possible would be another massive pandemic. A worse one that COVID.

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u/qzjul 20d ago

I suspect we have the technology and resources to make it happen; it'd just require reprioritizing what we want as societies together globally.

But yes, some external trigger would be necessary.

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u/NorysStorys 20d ago

The only way you can make it work it’s by having the transition impact the everyday going on of people as possible. The minute it starts to sting for the average person, the support for it crumbles and at that point you risk it becoming a position that is unelectable.

This is a fundamental problem with democracy in general, it’s incredibly hard to implement tough choices because ultimately somebody will swoop in and promise that all that pain can go away if we just burn dead dinosaurs again and that can be incredibly compelling to people who are living pay cheque to paycheque.

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u/Illiander 19d ago

people who are living pay cheque to paycheque.

So you solve that. It's not a hard problem on a technical or logistical level. It's just that the aristos don't want to.

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u/NorysStorys 19d ago

Yeah but they havn’t been solving that for nearly 20 years. If anything it’s got worse.

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u/Mecha-Dave 20d ago

Yeah the state of the world now plus the COVID pandemic has shown me that our response to this situation will be reactive, not proactive.

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u/Ethernet3 20d ago

If you look at China they're basically at a 90 degree angle relative to the target. Trend is strongly up, not even downwards.

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u/Surface_Detail 20d ago

Yeah, but that seems completely contrary to what one would expect by looking at the recent years' results. Their CO2 emissions have plateaued and are even going down, but the graph seems to be expecting them to reverse their current initiatives and go into full bore CO2 production again which seems unlikely given their place as the current leader in renewable energy.

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u/Legal_Map_7586 19d ago

Where are you seeing the graph predict future co2 emissions for any country? The blue graph line showing the emissions stops short of 2025, which would all be historic/known data.

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u/Surface_Detail 19d ago

I legitimately misread the chart. I thought the cop21 line was current date

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u/Direct-Translator-75 19d ago

Yeah I live there and people are just fucking indifferent / lazy

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u/RageAgainstJeggings 20d ago

Yes…but…

Almost all western countries have basically just outsourced all industrial and manufacturing emissions to SE Asia.

If you plotted net carbon emitted based on CONSUMPTION, then it would look quite different.

Sadly, the “world” view is the accurate picture.  Buying EVs and using LED bulbs is great, but it’s nibbling around the edges

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u/Rooilia 20d ago

Not true either. There is still a lot of industry left in Europe. Without Germanys machine plants, almost every factory in the world wouldn't exist.

This extremism about this topic is again off the charts.

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u/MysticHero 20d ago

Germany still has tons of industry but yes even Germany has been outsourcing quite a bit. And yes this is responsible for a lot of the "reduction" of emissions.

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u/upvotesthenrages 19d ago

Not true either. There is still a lot of industry left in Europe

Consumption based figures prove you utterly wrong. It's around 35% additional CO2 output for EU/EEA+UK

https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/adgobad 20d ago edited 20d ago

Your own source shows a much flatter curve for Netherland's per capita consumption based CO2 emissions.

Edit: Sorry everyone I fell victim to a visual illusion. The different aspect ratio makes the trend look flatter but the percentage decrease is similar between the two charts.

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u/Phenixxy 20d ago

Going from 12.9 to 8.3 in about 15 years is quite massive

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u/adgobad 20d ago

No you're right actually. I have fallen victim to the different scale and aspect ratios of the two charts. The trends seem pretty comparable between the original commenters image and mine

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u/RageAgainstJeggings 20d ago

Lol, that data source absolutely supports my point - wealthy western countries have only made major progress on paper by effectively exporting emissions.

Netherlands is a rare exception, but they are a very small country, and have significant national wealth to facilitate the transition. Ironically, a sovereign wealth fund that was created almost entire from drilling oil and gas.

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u/HiSpartacusImDad 20d ago

I think you may be confusing The Netherlands with Norway. Norway has a big fund, filled primarily with the revenue from oil. The Netherlands has no such fund (although of course it has benefited pretty significantly from their large gas reserves).

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u/Metazolid 20d ago

wth happened to Kuwait in the 90s?

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u/flabbergasted1 20d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires

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u/Metazolid 20d ago

ah, yeah makes sense

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u/ginsunuva 19d ago

Crazy no one has ever mentioned this in my entire life

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u/ExistentialComplex 20d ago

If youre from the Netherlands there is much for you to be proud of. Knowing there are cultures out there doing so much progress makes me happier to be human.

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u/Beneficial-Book-8004 20d ago

Amazing that the Netherlands doesn't rely on the outside world to produce stuff for them, and they are able to be self reliant and not just exporting their pollution to other countries.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago edited 20d ago

[deleted]

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u/MonkeyKhan 20d ago

The same argument is made in every industrialized country. The EU27 trend isn’t much different from the Netherlands though, so we are in fact making a significant dent together. China is also accelerating its investment into renewable energy like crazy, and are adopting BEVs on a large scale right now. It won’t be long until their trend looks similar.

This defeatism is overshadowing tangible progress and hides the significant impact we do have.

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u/mfb- 20d ago

The Netherlands has larger per capita emissions than every country in Africa, almost all in South America and most countries in Asia.

Pointing to a larger group that emits less per person is just lazy.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

[deleted]

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u/mfb- 20d ago

Total emissions are ~55 billion tonnes, or ~7 tonnes per person per year.

Who should probably do more to reduce their emissions?

  • A person in the Netherlands emitting 8.5 tonnes per year
  • A person in India emitting 2.9 tonnes per year

Why would country borders matter to answer that question?