Tracking GHG emission from agricultural and energy sectors in the EU from 1990 to 2016

What is it about?

Climate change resulting from greenhouse gas (GHG) emission (e.g. CO2, N2O, and CH4) has adversely affected ecosystems on a global scale (Qi et al., 2018). Recently, (GHG) emission had accelerated rapidly, with 3.93% and 1.23% in 2013 and 2014, respectively (Lu and Li, 2019). Whereas 10 to 12% of the global GHG emissions originate from agricultural practices and one-third of anthropogenic CH4 emissions produce in agriculture sector too (IPCC, 2013; Fellmann et al., 2018). All of these activities would increase the mean earth temperature between 1.4 and 5.8 °C before this present century is over (IPCC, 2014; Schwartz et al., 2004). Thus, the objective of this work is to present (GHG) emission changes between 1990 and 2016 from agricultural and energy sectors in the EU.

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Photo by Marcin Jozwiak on Unsplash

Photo by Marcin Jozwiak on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The results showed a negative trend in the GHG emission in most of the EU, while some countries showed a positive trend but not statistically significant as can be tracked in table 1 and figure 1. Also, results pointed out that agricultural sector contributes to 10% of the total GHG emission in the European Union, while the energy sector contributes to 77% of it. Interestingly, the GHG emissions from the energy and agricultural sectors showed an insignificant increase between 1990 and 2016 as can be seen in figure 2. Overall, the results showed a 4% reduction in CO 2 emissions, while CH4 and N2O increased by 1% and 3%, respectively.