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.