EDGAR JRC Global GHG Emissions Database Scraper
EDGAR JRC Global GHG Emissions Database Scraper
Pull country-level greenhouse gas emissions from the EU Commission's JRC EDGAR database — the most-cited global GHG dataset in use, referenced by IPCC AR6, the EU Green Deal, and virtually every serious climate research paper written in the last decade.
What it does
The scraper fetches the EDGAR dataset index page to discover the current release's ZIP manifest, downloads the requested gas bundles from the EU JRC open-data server, parses the XLSX files inside each ZIP, and emits one record per country × IPCC sector × gas × year. No authentication. No proxy. No rate-limit gymnastics. The EU Commission just puts the data out there.
Coverage:
- Gases: CO2 (IEA-EDGAR fuel combustion), CO2bio, CH4, N2O, F-gases, AR5_GHG (CO2-equivalent totals, GWP-100)
- Countries: ~250 (ISO-3 codes)
- Years: 1970–2023
- Sectors: IPCC 2006 classification (~25 per country per gas) or totals-only mode
The IEA-EDGAR CO2 bundle deserves a specific note. It's the closest freely available substitute for IEA's "CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion" product, which is paywalled. You get the same underlying methodology. The IEA just charges for the branded report.
Output schema
One row per emission record.
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
country_code |
string | ISO-3 country code (e.g. USA, DEU, CHN) |
country_name |
string | Country display name |
region |
string | EDGAR regional group (e.g. Annex_I, EU27) |
year |
integer | Reporting year (1970–2023) |
gas |
string | Gas identifier: CO2, CH4, N2O, F-gases, AR5_GHG |
sector_ipcc2006 |
string | IPCC 2006 sector code (e.g. 1A1a). Empty in totals-only mode. |
sector_name |
string | Human-readable sector name. Empty in totals-only mode. |
subsector |
string | fossil or bio sub-classification (null for totals rows) |
emission_kt |
number | Emission quantity in kt (or kt CO2e for AR5_GHG) |
emission_unit |
string | Always "kt" |
dataset_version |
string | EDGAR release directory, e.g. EDGAR_2024_GHG |
source_file |
string | Source ZIP filename for provenance |
is_fuel_combustion_iea |
boolean | True for IEA-EDGAR CO2 fuel combustion rows |
Input options
| Parameter | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
gases |
["CO2","CH4","N2O","AR5_GHG"] |
Gas bundles to download. Valid: CO2, CO2bio, CH4, N2O, F-gases, AR5_GHG. |
countries |
[] (all) |
ISO-3 country filter. Empty returns all ~250 countries. |
yearFrom |
2000 | First year to include. Earliest available: 1970. |
yearTo |
2023 | Last year to include. |
includeIeaFuelCombustion |
true |
Include IEA-EDGAR CO2 fuel combustion bundle. |
includeSectorBreakdown |
true |
Emit per-IPCC-sector rows. When false, emit country/gas/year totals only. |
includeMonthly |
false |
Download monthly bundles (much larger, slower). |
maxItems |
200 | Cap on output records. |
Use cases
ESG and supply-chain carbon accounting. Tools like Watershed, Persefoni, and Climatiq use country-level emission factors as baselines. EDGAR is the standard source. This actor eliminates the ZIP-parse pipeline.
Climate research. IPCC AR6 Working Group III references EDGAR extensively. If you're reproducing or extending that analysis, this is your data source.
Journalism and NGO reporting. EU Green Deal progress tracking, national emissions comparisons, sector-specific breakdowns. The actor returns data in a format that loads directly into a spreadsheet or database.
National statistics offices. Countries building their own GHG inventories cross-check against EDGAR. The sector breakdown by IPCC 2006 codes aligns with standard reporting frameworks.
Technical notes
The actor operates as a data pipeline, not a scraper in the traditional sense. It fetches the EDGAR index page to discover the current release year's ZIP manifest, then downloads each requested bundle sequentially. Files are unzipped in memory and parsed with SheetJS. The wide-format year columns (Y_1970 through Y_2023) are pivoted to long-format rows before output.
Memory requirement: 2 GB recommended for full multi-gas runs. Each ZIP is 6–50 MB uncompressed, and the EDGAR_AR5_GHG bundle is the largest at roughly 10 MB compressed.
EDGAR releases annually, typically mid-year. The actor auto-detects the current release from the index page, so it survives annual updates without code changes. You can also pin a specific version via the datasetVersion input.
Data source
EU Commission Joint Research Centre — EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research)
- Index: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset_ghg2024
- Data: https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/jrc-opendata/EDGAR/
- License: Creative Commons BY 4.0 (https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/about)
Cite as: Crippa M., et al. (2024) EDGAR Community GHG Database, European Commission, JRC.