Bridging Territorial and Consumption-Based Emissions for Urban Climate Action Assessment

Ying Yu, Diego Manya, Angel Hsu

Urban areas are responsible for the vast majority of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, yet their full contribution, particularly from consumption-based sources, remains inconsistently measured. To address this problem, we provide an updated and globally consistent estimate of urban contributions to both territorial and consumption-based emissions, finding that urban areas account for 87% of global consumption-based emissions and 78% of territorial emissions, with densely populated urban centers alone responsible for 54% and 43% respectively. We also examine how the composition of urban territorial emissions has evolved from 1970 to 2022, identifying a sharp rise in emissions from the energy sector and relative declines in contributions from industry and buildings. Finally, by comparing territorial and consumption-based emissions across regions, we map the global distribution of carbon leakage and find that 63% of subnational regions consume more emissions than they produce. These findings reveal critical blind spots in current urban climate strategies and highlight the need to integrate consumption-based accounting to fully capture cities’ mitigation responsibilities.