Three Decades of Consumption-Based CO2 Emissions in Europe

Three Decades of Consumption-Based CO2 Emissions in Europe

2024

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Tools: Affinity Designer, Flourish
Client: Visual Capitalist
Data: Global Carbon Budget (2023), Population based on various sources (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data.
Link: Three Decades of Consumption-Based CO2 Emissions in Europe
Color palette:

This project is my way of exploring visual experimentation and the creative possibilities of tilemaps.
The main feature is a tilemap of European countries, overlaid with climate stripes that show 30 years of per capita, consumption-based CO₂ emissions. Another layer shows whether each country is a net importer or exporter of CO₂.
 
Consumption-based emissions adjust a country’s carbon footprint by accounting for trade. They subtract emissions from exports and add those from imports. This method shows whether countries have truly reduced emissions or just moved carbon-intensive production elsewhere.
This visualization sits between conventional and experimental. It combines established techniques like climate stripes with less common ones like tilemaps to reveal patterns that might otherwise stay hidden.
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