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Data

Carbon price vs. share of global CO₂ emissions covered

RFF

What you should know about this indicator

  • This is the average carbon price paid per tonne of CO₂ across the country's emissions that are subject to a carbon tax or an emissions trading system. Uncovered emissions are excluded from the average.
  • This data primarily focuses on economic instruments targeting carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.
  • In some cases these instruments also cover other greenhouse gases. However, any pricing mechanisms that specifically target non-CO₂ gases (such as methane or nitrous oxide) are not included.
  • A country is considered to have a carbon tax or emissions trading system if at least one IPCC sector or gas is covered by the instrument. These instruments do not need to cover all sectors within the economy for this to apply.
  • Only countries with a carbon tax at the national level are included.
  • For each country, researchers calculate an emissions-weighted carbon price for the economy. To do this, they rely on two metrics:
    • Carbon prices applied at the sectoral level (e.g. electricity, or road transport).
    • Each sector's contribution to a country's CO₂ emissions (e.g. what percentage of a country's emissions come from electricity, or road transport). They then weight each sector's carbon price by the relevant sector's contribution to CO₂ emissions, and aggregate these figures to get an economy-wide weighted carbon price.
  • A full technical note on the methodology is provided by the authors in this report.
Carbon price vs. share of global CO₂ emissions covered
RFF
This data is expressed in US dollars. It is adjusted for inflation but does not account for differences in the cost of living between countries.
Source
Dolphin and Merkle (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 8, 2026
Next expected update
May 2027
Date range
1989–2025
Unit
constant 2021 US$ per tonne of CO₂ equivalents

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Resources for the Future – Emissions-weighted Carbon Price

The Emissions-weighted Carbon Price (ECP) is an economy-wide average price on CO₂ emissions. It is calculated from sector-fuel level data, which is aggregated back to the economy level using the share of each sector-fuel CO₂ emissions in total GHG emissions as weights. The full methodology is described in the Resources for the Future Working Paper 22-6 Emissions-weighted carbon price: Sources and Methods.

Retrieved on
May 8, 2026
Retrieved from
https://github.com/g-dolphin/ECP
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Dolphin, G., Merkle, M. Emissions-weighted carbon price: sources and methods. Sci Data 11, 1017 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03121-6.
Supported by Resources for the Future.

The Emissions-weighted Carbon Price (ECP) is an economy-wide average price on CO₂ emissions. It is calculated from sector-fuel level data, which is aggregated back to the economy level using the share of each sector-fuel CO₂ emissions in total GHG emissions as weights. The full methodology is described in the Resources for the Future Working Paper 22-6 Emissions-weighted carbon price: Sources and Methods.

Retrieved on
May 8, 2026
Retrieved from
https://github.com/g-dolphin/ECP
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Dolphin, G., Merkle, M. Emissions-weighted carbon price: sources and methods. Sci Data 11, 1017 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03121-6.
Supported by Resources for the Future.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

This indicator is derived from the source's economy-wide emissions-weighted carbon price, which averages prices across all of a country's CO₂ emissions (including those not subject to any carbon price). To obtain the average price restricted to covered emissions only, we divide the published price by the share of the country's CO₂ emissions that are covered by the relevant instrument.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Carbon price vs. share of global CO₂ emissions covered”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”. Data adapted from Resources for the Future. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260514-095506/grapher/carbon-price-vs-share-emissions.html [online resource] (archived on May 14, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Dolphin and Merkle (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Dolphin and Merkle (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Carbon price vs. share of global CO₂ emissions covered – RFF” [dataset]. Resources for the Future, “Emissions-weighted Carbon Price” [original data]. Retrieved May 14, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260514-095506/grapher/carbon-price-vs-share-emissions.html (archived on May 14, 2026).

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