Lifecycle carbon intensity of electricity

Lifecycle carbon intensity of electricity generation

Greenhouse gases emitted per unit of generated electricity, measured in grams of CO₂ equivalents per kilowatt-hour.
Data source: Ember
Unit: grams of CO₂ equivalents per kilowatt-hour
Last updated: 2026-04-24
Next expected update: 2027-04-24
Managed by: Pablo Rosado

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Quick download

Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

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Download only the currently selected data visible in the chart

Data URL (CSV format)

https://datapage-v2.owid.pages.dev/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Metadata URL (JSON format)

https://datapage-v2.owid.pages.dev/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets

=IMPORTDATA("https://datapage-v2.owid.pages.dev/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

Python with Pandas

import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://datapage-v2.owid.pages.dev/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://datapage-v2.owid.pages.dev/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()

R

library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://datapage-v2.owid.pages.dev/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://datapage-v2.owid.pages.dev/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

Stata

import delimited "https://datapage-v2.owid.pages.dev/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear