Nitrous oxide emissions
Nitrous oxide (N2O) emitted in the year, in thousand tonnes of nitrous oxide, mostly from fertilised agricultural soils and manure, plus industry (nitric and adipic acid), fuel combustion and wastewater, as estimated by EDGAR. EDGAR estimates every country with the same IPCC methods and international activity statistics, so countries can be compared, but the values differ from the inventories countries report themselves. Emissions from land use, land use change and forestry and from large scale biomass burning (savannah and forest fires) are not included. The latest two years are fast track estimates from proxy statistics, replaced in later releases, and are marked provisional.
Tonnes of the gas itself, not CO2 equivalent: EDGAR weights a tonne of nitrous oxide as 265 tonnes of CO2 over 100 years (IPCC AR5). EDGAR counts Andorra with Spain, Monaco with France, San Marino and the Holy See with Italy, and Liechtenstein with Switzerland. It reports Israel and Palestine, Sudan and South Sudan, and Serbia and Montenegro together, so those countries have no value here. Each release revises past years.
Key facts
- Nitrous oxide emissions in the United States was 833.37 thousand tonnes of nitrous oxide in 2025, according to the European Commission, Joint Research Centre.
- China had the highest nitrous oxide emissions of 217 countries in 2025, at 2,435.74 thousand tonnes of nitrous oxide, and Tokelau the lowest, at 0 thousand tonnes of nitrous oxide. Source: the European Commission, Joint Research Centre.
- Published for 217 places, with figures from 1970 to 2025.
Rankings
Countries by nitrous oxide emissions, 2025
Places with data
Countries
- India
- China
- United States
- Indonesia
- Pakistan
- Nigeria
- Brazil
- Bangladesh
- Russia
- Ethiopia
- Laos
- Saint Lucia
- Lebanon
- Peru
- Wallis and Futuna
- Afghanistan
Use this data in your AI agent
Invokely serves this figure to AI assistants through MCP and to code through a REST API, with the source and citation attached. Ask your assistant:
Which places have the highest nitrous oxide emissions? Use official data and cite it.
rank_places {"indicator":"n2o_emissions","level":"country"}
GET https://invokely.ai/api/v1/rank?indicator=n2o_emissions&level=country