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How Many Trees Would It Take To Absorb The World’s CO2 Emissions? (Calculator)

  1. Select a country from the first drop down below to find out how many trees it would take to absorb their annual CO2 emissions.
  2. You can also compare nations by selecting a second country from dropdown 2.
  3. Stats for the entire world are shown below the dropdowns.

According to the Edgar database, the World produced 37,077 Megatonnes of CO2 in 2017.

At an average CO2 absorbtion of 48lbs per annum per tree, it would take approximately 1703 billion trees to absorb the World's annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.

= 10 billion trees

Trees Per Individual

Per capita, each person on earth produced 4.9 tonnes of CO2 in 2017. It would take 225 trees to absorb the average CO2 emissions from fossil fuels of every human on earth.

= 1 tree

Biggest 5 Countries by Emissions

Between them, China, the USA, India, Russia, and Japan produce over 58% of the world's CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels. It would take almost a trillion trees to absorb the emissions from these 5 countries alone. In the visual below, 1 tree represents 10 billion trees.

= China (29.33%)    = USA (13.77%)    = India (6.62%)    = Russia (4.75%)    = Japan (3.56%)     = Rest of World

Notes and references

  1. Annual emission figures for CO2 are based on the EDGAR database created by the European Commission and Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and are for the year 2017. The figures only include carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and cement manufacture, which means that actual emissions for each country are likely to be higher [see List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions].
  2. According to NC State University College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, a tree can absorb up to 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. With 2,204.62 pounds in a metric tonne, it would take at least 45.93 trees to asborb one metric ton of carbon dioxide in a year. [see tree facts].
  3. 1 metric tonne = 2204.62 pounds
  4. 1 megatonne = 1 million metric tonnes.