The CREA CO2 Tracker is an online tool estimating CO2 emissions from fossil fuels within the EU27 region with only a week of latency.
With the fossil fuel supply crunch caused by Russia’s decision to limit gas exports to Europe, there were widespread expectations that the EU would boost coal use to the extent that emissions would in fact go up. This had not come to pass by October 2022 — read our briefing on emissions trends in the EU up to that point.
The EU’s progress in reducing emissions even accelerated in 2023, with a 8% year-on-year drop, as highlighted in our more recent briefing.
Temperature-corrected electricity and gas demand
To understand the trends in energy demand, it’s important to untangle the impact of weather variations and changes in consumption patterns. The changes in “temperature-corrected” demand indicate changes in underlying demand patterns, after the effect of temperatures is removed.
We derive temperature-corrected demand from regression models that predict variations in demand based on the cooling and heating needs in each EU member state. The need for heating and cooling is measured using a metrics called cooling-degrees and heating-degrees, meaning degrees above 24°C and below 15°C, respectively. These are calculated daily, on population-weighted national average basis, from gridded temperature and population data.
Our regression models are able to account for 90% daily variation of gas demand and 80% power demand using the model, so that gives us high confidence that we’re successfully capturing the effect of weather.
Methodology
Approach – The tracker derives fossil fuel consumption from EUROSTAT’s Supply, Transformation, and Consumption data1 and then applies IPCC emission factors2 to estimate associated CO2 emissions.
Scope – CREA CO2 Tracker covers CO2 emissions resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels. It does not include industrial process emissions that are not stemming from fossil fuels, nor does it include agricultural emissions or emissions related to Land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF).
Frequency and latency – CREA CO2 Tracker offers CO2 emission estimates on a daily basis with a three to four-day lag. EUROSTAT data typically exhibits a one to two-month latency. To counter this and accurately estimate the most recent emission trends, the CREA CO2 Tracker utilizes data from ENTSOG for natural gas and from ENTSOE for electricity generation to project EUROSTAT time series. For oil and industrial coal consumption, we estimate the most recent emissions by continuing recent trends.
Full methodology is available here.