The chart above shows transportation-based carbon dioxide emissions broken down by economic output in EU and US states. Only one EU state ranks in the top 20 emitters. Not one US state is in the bottom 20 in this metric.
Findings
- The difference between the state with the most emissions per thousand dollars of GDP, Alaska, and the state with the least, Austria, is 222.52 metric tons.
- Alaska emits 16.78 times the carbon dioxide per thousand dollars of GDP that Austria does.
- Only Alaska, Mississippi, and Wyoming emit more than 200 metric tons and only Croatia, Cyprus, Belgium, France, and Austria emit less than 20.
- The mean transportation-based carbon dioxide emissions for every thousand in GDP for the 50 US states is 114.77 and the median 104.45.
- The mean transportation-based carbon dioxide emissions for every thousand in GDP for the 28 EU states is 42.89 and the median 27.37.
- The mean transportation-based carbon dioxide emissions for every thousand in GDP for all 78 states is 88.97 and the median 87.22.
Caveats
- GDP data is from 2016.
- Emissions data is from 2013.
- All figures are rounded to the nearest hundredth.
- US GDP and emissions data come from different sources.
- EU and US data come from different sources.
- EU data was converted from euros to dollars at the average 2016 0.77 euros to dollars rate.
- The road network is very limited in Alaska, so much so that the state capital is not connected by road, and one in 78 people are pilots.
Details
Alaska tops the charts just as it does in the per capita emissions. Denmark and Malta remain the only two states with high emission rates when emissions are measured against GDP instead of population while Luxembourg fares better and Lithuania fares worse.
The European Union as a whole emits 24.38 metric tons of carbon dioxide per thousand euros of GDP from transportation sources annually ranking it just under Ireland and above the United Kingdom (and below every single US state). The United States as a whole emits 94.89 metric tons of carbon dioxide per thousand dollars of GDP from transportation sources annually ranking it just under Ohio and above Nevada (and above every EU state save for Denmark, Lithuania, and Malta).
Sources
Eurostat. 2017. "Data Explorer." Accessed December 11, 2017. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=urb_lpop1&lang=en.
Eurostat. 2017. "Gross Domestic Product at Market Prices. Accessed October 26, 2017. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/refreshTableAction.do?tab=table&plugin=1&pcode=tec00001&language=en.
US Bureau of Economic Analysis. 2017. "Regional Data." Accessed October 26, 2017. https://bea.gov/itable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=70&step=1#reqid=70&step=1&isuri=1.
United States Department of Transportation. 2015. "State Transportation by the Numbers." Accessed March 21, 2018. https://www.bts.gov/sites/bts.dot.gov/files/legacy/_entire.pdf.