Fossil-Fuel CO₂ Emissions from Centrally Planned Europe (Eastern Europe)

Graphics    Digital Data

What countries constitute Centrally Planned Europe (Eastern Europe)?

Trends

Centrally Planned Europe (CPE) is the only region of the world where releases of CO₂ due to fossil-fuel use are generally declining. Despite annual increases the past four years that has raised CPE fossil-fuel emissions to 842 million metric tons of carbon, the 2006 level is indicative of 1970 emission levels and well below emission levels of the late 1980s. Remarkable growth characterized fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions for the period from the mid 1940s through 1988 in Eastern Europe. During 1989-90, CO₂ emissions from Eastern Europe fell 8.3% to early-1980s levels. Since peaking in 1988 at nearly 1.42 billion metric tons of carbon, emissions have dropped 41% to 842 million metric tons of carbon in 2006. A portion of the decline is due to the unification of Germany and an artifact of our regional definitions (~80 million metric tons). Germany is now treated as a separate region whereas before our definition of Centrally Planned Europe included East Germany. The region now includes Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the 15 republics of the former USSR. Per capita emissions have large variability across the region but are generally high and now average 2.24 metric tons of carbon per person per year. Coal has been the traditional fuel for the region and contributed 83% of the total fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions in 1950. Most recently, use of gas fuels has increased dramatically, and since 1996 emissions from gas fuels have exceeded emissions from coal. In 2006, gas consumption accounted for 43.1% of CPE fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions reaching 363 million metric tons of carbon.