US drives nearly half of global emissions rise as 2025 total hits 41 billion tonnes
Energy Institute data shows US emissions up 3.2% last year, with North America accounting for 47% of a global increase that outpaced the decade average.
North America accounted for 47.1% of the increase in global carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions in 2025 while representing just 15.6% of the world total, according to the Energy Institute's 2026 Statistical Review of World Energy, published in partnership with Ember. US emissions rose from 5.1 billion metric tons in 2024 to 5.3 billion metric tons in 2025, an increase of about 147 million metric tons, or 3.2% on the review's adjusted basis — roughly triple the global rate.5
The global figure tells a similar story. Total emissions reached 41.0 billion metric tons in 2025, up from 40.7 billion the year before, a rise of about 331 million metric tons. On the Statistical Review's adjusted basis, global emissions grew 1.1%, above the 10-year average of 0.9% per year. Another year of record renewables deployment did not prevent an all-time high.5
The US contribution is the hard number to dismiss. At 3.2%, American emissions grew at nearly triple the global rate, and North America's 47.1% share of the increase came from a region that produces a fraction of the world's total output. This is what happens when a major economy expands fossil production without a binding constraint on aggregate emissions.5
China runs a different set of problems. Carbon Brief analysis shows Chinese CO2 emissions grew 2% year on year in the first quarter of 2026, driven partly by a sharp rise in curtailed wind and solar output — power generated and then wasted because the grid cannot absorb it. Wind capacity jumped 23% year on year and solar 33%, yet coal consumption in the chemical industry grew 20%, and the Strait of Hormuz disruption and associated oil price surge produced no change in that trend.2
For carbon market participants, China's curtailment data is the swing factor for 2026 emissions. Every gigawatt-hour of wasted wind pushes coal generation back into the dispatch stack. The problem is grid integration, not capacity addition, and fixing it takes years of transmission investment rather than months of policy adjustment.2
The UK offers a partial counterpoint. Power demand reached 290.6 TWh in 2025, growth of 1.8% year on year according to the Energy Institute data, breaking a multi-year decline. But the Energy Voice analysis is blunt: Britain cut emissions the easy way, switching from coal to gas and then to wind on the power side. The hard reductions — replacing fossil heating, electrifying heavy industry — are still ahead.4
The EU's mechanism for forcing those reductions is under revision. The Commission has launched a consultation on updated ETS benchmark values used to calculate free allocation of emission allowances, with free allocation stated to cover around 75% of industrial emissions on average. The indirect emissions treatment across 14 product benchmarks carries significant financial weight for industrial operators, and data reporting requirements are expected to tighten materially.3
The ETS cap itself is set to bring covered emissions down 62% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels, following the 2023 revision of the Directive. Benchmark revisions are a slow instrument — they feed through to allocation levels over years, not quarters — and industrial operators are already pushing back on the compliance data burden.3
Methane abatement is the other variable. Analysis reported by Asian Power suggests that abatement measures could make up to 200 billion cubic metres of natural gas available to global markets each year, a volume that would carry material price implications given the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Emissions remained high in 2025 despite reduction commitments, which means the gap between pledged and delivered abatement is itself a latent supply story.1
The Statistical Review has served as the industry's annual scorecard for over 70 years. Its 2025 verdict: emissions at an all-time high, the US driving disproportionate growth, China adding renewables faster than its grid can use them. Watch whether China's curtailment rate falls in the second and third quarters of 2026 — if it does not, coal stays in the stack and the global trajectory does not improve.5,2