Countries by nitrous oxide emissions
China had the highest nitrous oxide emissions of 217 countries in 2021, at 2,234.28 thousand tonnes of nitrous oxide. Tokelau had the lowest, at 0 thousand tonnes of nitrous oxide. The median was 7.35 thousand tonnes of nitrous oxide. Source: the European Commission, Joint Research Centre.
Map of countries, 2021
- Under 10
- 10 to 20
- 20 to 70
- 70 and over
- No data
Top 40 countries, 2021
Full ranking
| Rank | Countries | 2021 | Change on 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 2,234.28 | +3.4% |
| 2 | India | 1,004.69 | +0.9% |
| 3 | United States | 859.27 | +0.3% |
| 4 | Brazil | 611.82 | +4% |
| 5 | Russia | 325.61 | -1.8% |
| 6 | Indonesia | 244.95 | +1.3% |
| 7 | Pakistan | 222.99 | +2.5% |
| 8 | Australia | 173.31 | +8.3% |
| 9 | Mexico | 152 | +0.1% |
| 10 | Argentina | 149.58 | +1.6% |
| 11 | Canada | 145.16 | -4.1% |
| 12 | Ethiopia | 143.26 | -5.4% |
| 13 | Türkiye | 137.3 | -2.1% |
| 14 | France | 127.71 | +6.3% |
| 15 | Germany | 121.67 | -4.2% |
| 16 | Iran | 114.13 | +4.2% |
| 17 | Nigeria | 112.96 | +5.8% |
| 18 | United Kingdom | 102.87 | -0.7% |
| 19 | Ukraine | 100.24 | +3.9% |
| 20 | Vietnam | 99.49 | +8.4% |
| 21 | Poland | 91.61 | -1% |
| 22 | Bangladesh | 90.26 | +5.5% |
| 23 | South Africa | 83.12 | +8.3% |
| 24 | Japan | 79.72 | +1.3% |
| 25 | Spain | 75.92 | -5.7% |
| 26 | Colombia | 75.12 | +8.1% |
| 27 | Egypt | 74.87 | +1.6% |
| 28 | Thailand | 74.72 | -4.8% |
| 29 | Tanzania | 74.07 | +2.5% |
| 30 | Chad | 72.71 | +4.2% |
| 31 | South Korea | 62.4 | +3.9% |
| 32 | Kenya | 61.97 | -10.1% |
| 33 | Philippines | 60.09 | -2.6% |
| 34 | Italy | 56.68 | -7.5% |
| 35 | Belarus | 55.29 | -1.5% |
| 36 | Uzbekistan | 52.5 | +0.4% |
| 37 | Myanmar | 52.33 | -5.5% |
| 38 | Mongolia | 45.08 | +1.8% |
| 39 | Uganda | 42.8 | +5.1% |
| 40 | New Zealand | 41.13 | -1.8% |
| 41 | Saudi Arabia | 38.53 | +0.8% |
| 42 | Mali | 37.04 | +2.8% |
| 43 | Niger | 37.03 | +4.9% |
| 44 | Venezuela | 37.01 | -0.8% |
| 45 | Romania | 36.36 | +3% |
| 46 | Kazakhstan | 35.93 | +2.9% |
| 47 | Ireland | 34.22 | +0.2% |
| 48 | Netherlands | 32.62 | -2% |
| 49 | Malaysia | 31.97 | -2.7% |
| 50 | Peru | 31.84 | +9.7% |
| 51 | Zambia | 29.89 | -0.4% |
| 52 | Democratic Republic of the Congo | 28.13 | +2.1% |
| 53 | Algeria | 27.54 | -0% |
| 54 | Uruguay | 26.14 | +14.4% |
| 55 | Iraq | 25.3 | -8.5% |
| 56 | Paraguay | 25.29 | -0.9% |
| 57 | Bolivia | 25.03 | +4.1% |
| 58 | Angola | 24.97 | +1.4% |
| 59 | Chile | 24.38 | -4.5% |
| 60 | Nepal | 24.37 | +5.6% |
| 61 | Morocco | 24.16 | -2.7% |
| 62 | Burkina Faso | 23.11 | +10.2% |
| 63 | Hungary | 22.71 | -0.3% |
| 64 | Turkmenistan | 22.32 | +0.5% |
| 65 | Czechia | 22.29 | +4.3% |
| 66 | Sweden | 22.18 | -2.4% |
| 67 | Finland | 21.86 | -3.3% |
| 68 | Belgium | 19.37 | -0.3% |
| 69 | Somalia | 18.79 | -1% |
| 70 | Taiwan | 18.63 | +2.5% |
| 71 | Zimbabwe | 18.58 | +12.6% |
| 72 | Guatemala | 18.23 | -1.5% |
| 73 | Denmark | 18.1 | -3.4% |
| 74 | Cameroon | 17.54 | -1.1% |
| 75 | Ecuador | 17.46 | +3.7% |
| 76 | Mozambique | 17.11 | +3.9% |
| 77 | Madagascar | 17.09 | -5.2% |
| 78 | Central African Republic | 17.02 | +1.1% |
| 79 | Yemen | 16.5 | +3.1% |
| 80 | Lithuania | 16.01 | -3.9% |
| 81 | Bulgaria | 15.43 | -0.5% |
| 82 | Guinea | 15.4 | +3.4% |
| 83 | Afghanistan | 15.2 | -11.1% |
| 84 | Malawi | 14.68 | +1.6% |
| 85 | Senegal | 13.47 | -2.1% |
| 86 | Syria | 13.22 | -4.8% |
| 87 | Cambodia | 12.83 | +0.3% |
| 88 | Austria | 12.8 | -2.3% |
| 89 | Greece | 12.69 | -5.8% |
| 90 | Ghana | 12.68 | -2% |
| 91 | Norway | 12.13 | +0.3% |
| 92 | Portugal | 11.84 | -7.7% |
| 93 | Côte d’Ivoire | 11.73 | +12.1% |
| 94 | Dominican Republic | 11.18 | +2.9% |
| 95 | Laos | 10.77 | -4.4% |
| 96 | Cuba | 10.58 | -2.2% |
| 97 | Nicaragua | 9.91 | -0.6% |
| 98 | Tunisia | 9.24 | +6.8% |
| 99 | North Korea | 8.98 | -3.1% |
| 100 | United Arab Emirates | 8.96 | +4.3% |
| 101 | Mauritania | 8.79 | +1% |
| 102 | Latvia | 8.7 | -3.6% |
| 103 | Switzerland | 8.67 | +0.7% |
| 104 | Azerbaijan | 8.6 | -9.4% |
| 105 | Slovakia | 8.14 | +2.5% |
| 106 | Tajikistan | 7.59 | -5.6% |
| 107 | Botswana | 7.56 | +46.6% |
| 108 | Benin | 7.46 | +4.5% |
| 109 | Namibia | 7.35 | +2.6% |
| 110 | Kyrgyzstan | 7.34 | +2.2% |
| 111 | Honduras | 6.94 | -2.7% |
| 112 | Costa Rica | 6.93 | +15.9% |
| 113 | Sri Lanka | 6.79 | -18.2% |
| 114 | Croatia | 6.64 | -11.1% |
| 115 | Estonia | 6.59 | -5.1% |
| 116 | Rwanda | 5.96 | +0.3% |
| 117 | Papua New Guinea | 5.91 | +0.9% |
| 118 | Libya | 5.69 | +4.9% |
| 119 | Georgia | 5.62 | +4.5% |
| 120 | Haiti | 5.5 | +0.4% |
| 121 | Burundi | 5.45 | +23.7% |
| 122 | Eritrea | 4.84 | -0.1% |
| 123 | Jordan | 4.83 | +2.1% |
| 124 | Togo | 4.68 | +3.2% |
| 125 | Bosnia and Herzegovina | 4.57 | -13.2% |
| 126 | Oman | 4.37 | +2.3% |
| 127 | Kuwait | 4.31 | +10% |
| 128 | Moldova | 4.2 | +5.7% |
| 129 | Panama | 3.95 | +3.3% |
| 130 | El Salvador | 3.85 | -9.3% |
| 131 | Sierra Leone | 3.42 | +8.6% |
| 132 | Qatar | 3.32 | +0.2% |
| 133 | Albania | 3.17 | -2.2% |
| 134 | Lebanon | 3.15 | -7.5% |
| 135 | Hong Kong | 3.02 | -4.6% |
| 136 | Slovenia | 2.85 | +4.5% |
| 137 | Republic of the Congo | 2.7 | -1.4% |
| 138 | Puerto Rico | 2.61 | +9.9% |
| 139 | Singapore | 2.6 | +4.1% |
| 140 | Guinea-Bissau | 1.99 | -2.3% |
| 141 | Armenia | 1.92 | -2.7% |
| 142 | Eswatini | 1.83 | -0.1% |
| 143 | Gabon | 1.72 | -0% |
| 144 | Liberia | 1.67 | +0.3% |
| 145 | North Macedonia | 1.59 | -11.7% |
| 146 | Brunei | 1.52 | +0.9% |
| 147 | Lesotho | 1.5 | +2.3% |
| 148 | Guyana | 1.42 | -5.2% |
| 149 | Jamaica | 1.27 | +3% |
| 150 | Cyprus | 1.18 | -2.4% |
| 151 | Iceland | 1.11 | +0.7% |
| 152 | Bahrain | 1.02 | +2.5% |
| 153 | Luxembourg | 0.98 | +1% |
| 154 | Trinidad and Tobago | 0.98 | -1.7% |
| 155 | Djibouti | 0.83 | +1.1% |
| 156 | Gambia | 0.82 | -0% |
| 157 | Timor-Leste | 0.8 | -5.6% |
| 158 | Fiji | 0.71 | -1% |
| 159 | Bhutan | 0.7 | -0.3% |
| 160 | New Caledonia | 0.65 | -27.5% |
| 161 | Suriname | 0.59 | +2% |
| 162 | Mauritius | 0.52 | -4.2% |
| 163 | Réunion | 0.47 | +0.6% |
| 164 | Belize | 0.35 | -6.2% |
| 165 | Vanuatu | 0.27 | -0.5% |
| 166 | Guadeloupe | 0.25 | -0.1% |
| 167 | Cape Verde | 0.24 | +4.7% |
| 168 | Comoros | 0.24 | +5.2% |
| 169 | Macao | 0.21 | -3.2% |
| 170 | Western Sahara | 0.2 | +3.7% |
| 171 | Faroe Islands | 0.2 | -0.1% |
| 172 | Equatorial Guinea | 0.19 | -0.3% |
| 173 | Malta | 0.19 | -3% |
| 174 | Maldives | 0.18 | +17.1% |
| 175 | Bahamas | 0.17 | +14.4% |
| 176 | Samoa | 0.15 | +20.3% |
| 177 | Solomon Islands | 0.14 | +0.6% |
| 178 | Falkland Islands | 0.14 | +2.6% |
| 179 | Barbados | 0.14 | +0.8% |
| 180 | Martinique | 0.13 | +1.2% |
| 181 | French Polynesia | 0.13 | +5.5% |
| 182 | French Guiana | 0.12 | +2.3% |
| 183 | Palau | 0.1 | +4.1% |
| 184 | Tonga | 0.1 | +0.3% |
| 185 | Seychelles | 0.08 | -0.9% |
| 186 | São Tomé and Príncipe | 0.07 | +2.5% |
| 187 | Saint Lucia | 0.07 | -0.1% |
| 188 | Micronesia | 0.05 | -1.7% |
| 189 | Antigua and Barbuda | 0.05 | +2.5% |
| 190 | Dominica | 0.04 | +1.8% |
| 191 | Grenada | 0.04 | +6.1% |
| 192 | Aruba | 0.04 | +7.9% |
| 193 | Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | 0.04 | +0.3% |
| 194 | Cayman Islands | 0.03 | +0.6% |
| 195 | Greenland | 0.03 | +0.2% |
| 196 | Bermuda | 0.03 | +11.6% |
| 197 | Kiribati | 0.03 | +1.1% |
| 198 | Guam | 0.02 | +1.1% |
| 199 | Gibraltar | 0.02 | -4% |
| 200 | U.S. Virgin Islands | 0.02 | -0% |
| 201 | Saint Kitts and Nevis | 0.02 | +7.7% |
| 202 | Montserrat | 0.02 | -4.3% |
| 203 | Turks and Caicos Islands | 0.02 | +5.1% |
| 204 | British Virgin Islands | 0.02 | +3% |
| 205 | Cook Islands | 0.02 | -2.9% |
| 206 | Mayotte | 0.01 | +2.8% |
| 207 | Wallis and Futuna | 0.01 | -0.5% |
| 208 | American Samoa | 0.01 | +0.5% |
| 209 | Tuvalu | 0.01 | +0.9% |
| 210 | Northern Mariana Islands | 0.01 | +0.8% |
| 211 | Marshall Islands | 0 | +4.3% |
| 212 | Saint Helena | 0 | -1.7% |
| 213 | Saint Pierre and Miquelon | 0 | +2.6% |
| 214 | Anguilla | 0 | -3.2% |
| 215 | Nauru | 0 | -1.7% |
| 216 | Niue | 0 | +0.8% |
| 217 | Tokelau | 0 | +18.7% |
Other periods
About this ranking
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.
More on how it is measured
- 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.
Every value in the ranking comes from the same publisher and the same period, so the countries are compared on one definition. Equal values share a rank.
How to cite
EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) Community GHG Database, European Commission, Joint Research Centre. EDGAR N2O emissions by country, thousand tonnes (Gg) of nitrous oxide. https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/jrc-opendata/EDGAR/datasets/EDGAR_2026_GHG/. Retrieved 2026-10-12. © European Union, licensed under CC BY 4.0.Citation styles
APA 7
European Commission, Joint Research Centre. (2026). EDGAR N2O emissions by country, thousand tonnes (Gg) of nitrous oxide (Countries by nitrous oxide emissions, 2021) [Data set]. Retrieved October 12, 2026, from https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/jrc-opendata/EDGAR/datasets/EDGAR_2026_GHG/
MLA 9
EDGAR N2O emissions by country, thousand tonnes (Gg) of nitrous oxide, Countries by nitrous oxide emissions, 2021. European Commission, Joint Research Centre, 18 Sept. 2026, https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/jrc-opendata/EDGAR/datasets/EDGAR_2026_GHG/. Invokely, https://invokely.ai/rankings/nitrous-oxide-emissions/countries?period=2021. Accessed 12 Oct. 2026.
Chicago (author-date)
European Commission, Joint Research Centre. 2026. EDGAR N2O emissions by country, thousand tonnes (Gg) of nitrous oxide. Countries by nitrous oxide emissions, 2021. Dataset. Accessed October 12, 2026. https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/jrc-opendata/EDGAR/datasets/EDGAR_2026_GHG/. Also distributed by Invokely, https://invokely.ai/rankings/nitrous-oxide-emissions/countries?period=2021.
Harvard
European Commission, Joint Research Centre (2026) EDGAR N2O emissions by country, thousand tonnes (Gg) of nitrous oxide, Countries by nitrous oxide emissions, 2021 [Dataset]. Available at: https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/jrc-opendata/EDGAR/datasets/EDGAR_2026_GHG/, via Invokely: https://invokely.ai/rankings/nitrous-oxide-emissions/countries?period=2021 (Accessed: 12 October 2026).
BibTeX
@misc{european_countries_by_nitrous_oxide_2021,
author = {{European Commission, Joint Research Centre}},
title = {{EDGAR N2O emissions by country, thousand tonnes (Gg) of nitrous oxide: Countries by nitrous oxide emissions, 2021}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {Data set},
url = {https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/jrc-opendata/EDGAR/datasets/EDGAR_2026_GHG/},
urldate = {2026-10-12},
note = {Accessed via Invokely, https://invokely.ai/rankings/nitrous-oxide-emissions/countries?period=2021. Publisher attribution: EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) Community GHG Database, European Commission, Joint Research Centre. EDGAR N2O emissions by country, thousand tonnes (Gg) of nitrous oxide. https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/jrc-opendata/EDGAR/datasets/EDGAR\_2026\_GHG/. Retrieved 2026-10-12. © European Union, licensed under CC BY 4.0.},
}
RIS
TY - DATA
AU - European Commission, Joint Research Centre
TI - EDGAR N2O emissions by country, thousand tonnes (Gg) of nitrous oxide: Countries by nitrous oxide emissions, 2021
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/18
PB - European Commission, Joint Research Centre
DB - Invokely
UR - https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/jrc-opendata/EDGAR/datasets/EDGAR_2026_GHG/
L2 - https://invokely.ai/rankings/nitrous-oxide-emissions/countries?period=2021
Y2 - 2026/10/12
N1 - Accessed via Invokely, https://invokely.ai/rankings/nitrous-oxide-emissions/countries?period=2021.
N1 - Publisher attribution: EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) Community GHG Database, European Commission, Joint Research Centre. EDGAR N2O emissions by country, thousand tonnes (Gg) of nitrous oxide. https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/jrc-opendata/EDGAR/datasets/EDGAR_2026_GHG/. Retrieved 2026-10-12. © European Union, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
ER -
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:
Rank Countries by nitrous oxide emissions using official data, and cite the source.
rank_places {"indicator":"n2o_emissions","level":"country","limit":10}
GET https://invokely.ai/api/v1/rank?indicator=n2o_emissions&level=country&limit=10Questions
Which country has the highest nitrous oxide emissions?
China, with 2,234.28 thousand tonnes of nitrous oxide in 2021, according to the European Commission, Joint Research Centre.
Which country has the lowest nitrous oxide emissions?
Tokelau, with 0 thousand tonnes of nitrous oxide in 2021.
Where does this ranking come from?
Every value comes from one source and one period, so the places are comparable: European Commission, Joint Research Centre, EDGAR N2O emissions by country, thousand tonnes (Gg) of nitrous oxide. Retrieved 2026-10-12.