The World's Highest Per-Capita CO2 Emitters in 2024

Five Countries, Five Outsized Footprints

When measuring carbon emissions by population rather than total output, a familiar cluster of nations rises to the top: small, fossil-fuel-rich states where energy is cheap, distances are short but cars are ubiquitous, and petrochemical industries dominate the economy. The 2024 figures from Our World in Data’s annual CO2 emissions per capita dataset make that pattern strikingly clear.

Qatar Leads by a Wide Margin

Qatar recorded CO2 emissions per capita of 41.27 tonnes in 2024, placing it well ahead of every other country in the dataset. That figure reflects a combination of factors: a heavily air-conditioned built environment in an extreme desert climate, a large liquefied natural gas industry, energy subsidies that keep domestic fuel prices low, and a relatively small citizen population relative to the country’s industrial base.

The gap between Qatar and the next-ranked country is substantial — more than 15 tonnes per person — which underscores how exceptional Qatar’s position is, even within a group of high-emitting Gulf states.

Kuwait and Brunei: A Near-Tie for Second

Kuwait and Brunei sit in remarkably close proximity in the rankings. Kuwait’s per-capita emissions reached 26.25 tonnes in 2024, while Brunei came in just fractionally lower at 26.05 tonnes. The two countries share structural similarities: both are small, hydrocarbon-dependent economies where domestic energy consumption is heavily subsidized and industrial activity is concentrated in fossil fuel extraction and processing.

Brunei’s figure is particularly notable given the country’s geographic and demographic profile — a small sultanate on the island of Borneo with a population of under half a million. Its oil and gas sector accounts for a dominant share of GDP, and that economic structure is directly reflected in its per-capita emissions.

Bahrain and Trinidad and Tobago Round Out the Top Five

Bahrain recorded 24.27 tonnes per capita in 2024. Like its Gulf neighbors, Bahrain hosts a significant aluminum smelting industry — one of the most energy-intensive manufacturing processes — alongside its oil refining operations. The country’s small land area and dense industrial activity relative to population push its per-capita figure into the top tier globally.

Trinidad and Tobago, the only non-Gulf country in this group, posted 22.93 tonnes per capita in 2024. The twin-island Caribbean nation is a major producer and exporter of liquefied natural gas and petrochemicals, and its domestic energy mix is almost entirely gas-based. High industrial energy use relative to a population of roughly 1.4 million drives its per-capita figure to levels that rival the wealthiest Gulf states.

What These Numbers Share

Looking across all five figures — 41.27, 26.25, 26.05, 24.27, and 22.93 tonnes per capita — a few common threads emerge:

• Small populations amplify industrial emissions. When a country’s oil refinery, aluminum smelter, or LNG terminal serves global export markets but the domestic population is counted in the hundreds of thousands, per-capita figures climb sharply.
• Energy subsidies suppress efficiency incentives. In several of these countries, fuel and electricity prices are kept artificially low, reducing the economic pressure to adopt more efficient technologies or behaviors.
• Climate and geography play a role. Extreme heat in the Gulf drives enormous air-conditioning loads. In Brunei and Trinidad, tropical humidity adds to cooling demand year-round.

Limitations Worth Noting

Per-capita framing is useful but incomplete. A country with 500,000 people emitting 40 tonnes each contributes far less to global atmospheric CO2 than a country of 1.4 billion emitting 8 tonnes each. The per-capita lens is best understood as a measure of structural intensity — how deeply fossil fuels are embedded in a society’s daily life and economic activity — rather than as a direct measure of global climate impact.

The dataset also attributes emissions to the country of consumption or production depending on methodology; trade-embedded emissions (goods manufactured in one country and consumed in another) are not fully captured here.

The Broader Context

The 2024 data covers 25,363 country-year observations stretching back decades, allowing these snapshots to be placed in longer historical context. What the current figures confirm is that the top of the per-capita rankings has remained remarkably stable: the same small group of fossil-fuel-intensive economies has occupied these positions for years. Whether that stability persists into the late 2020s will depend heavily on energy transition policies, subsidy reform, and the pace of industrial diversification in each of these countries.

Every figure above is traced to a source row. How we validate our data · Editorial standards