Green – The Fund Society

Visualized: The Price of Carbon Around the World in 2024

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14 seconds ago

June 25, 2024 Article & Editing Graphics & Design Visualized: The Price of Carbon Around the World

Only 1% of global emissions are priced high enough to meet the Paris Agreement’s temperature target in 2024.

This chart, created in partnership with the National Public Utilities Council, shows carbon prices around the world using data from the World Bank.

Let’s start by looking at what carbon pricing is and how it works.

What Is Carbon Pricing?

Carbon pricing is an environmental strategy aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by assigning a monetary cost to carbon emissions.

The most common types of carbon pricing are emissions trading systems (ETS) and carbon taxes. The former sets an overall emission limit and allocates permits for trading, whereas the latter imposes a fee on emissions to increase their cost and incentivize reductions.

According to the World Bank, Finland and Poland were the first countries to implement a federal carbon price in 1990. The most recent countries, on the other hand, were Australia, Hungary, and Indonesia, implementing carbon pricing in 2023.

Carbon Prices, By Region

In 2017, the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition suggested that carbon prices should range from $50–100/tCO2 by 2030 to meet the Paris Climate Agreement’s temperature goal.

Fast forward to 2024, the global average carbon price is $32/tCO2—$18 short of the minimum that is needed in six years.

Carbon pricing varies significantly across different regions. Europe and Central Asia have the highest number of pricing initiatives out of any other world region, with an average price of $50/tCO2.

In the U.S. and Canada, the average price is slightly lower at $48 per ton, with 16 initiatives in place. North America’s approach is characterized by both federal and state/provincial systems, including notable schemes like Canada’s federal carbon pricing and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the United States.

RegionAverage Carbon PriceNumber of Initiatives Europe & Central Asia$5026 U.S. & Canada$4816 Latin America & Caribbean$2411 East Asia & Pacific$1118 Africa$101

The European Union’s ETS system was introduced in 2005. The initiative led to a 16% decrease in covered emissions between 2022 and 2023 and generated $47 billion. Several EU member countries have also implemented their own carbon pricing mechanisms to address sectors outside the EU ETS’s scope or to generate

Ranked: Top 20 Countries by Plastic Waste per Capita

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1 day ago

June 12, 2024 Graphics/Design:

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

Ranked: Top 20 Countries by Plastic Waste per Capita

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Single-use plastic waste is perhaps one of the biggest environmental issues of our time. Every year, millions of tons of plastic end up in oceans and landfills, harming wildlife and ecosystems.

To make matters worse, plastics take hundreds of years to decompose, leading to long-term environmental and health hazards as they break down into microplastics that contaminate water and food sources.

In this graphic, we visualized the top 20 countries that generated the most single-use plastic waste per capita in 2019, measured in kilograms per person. Figures come from research published in May 2021, which we sourced from Statista.

Data and Key Takeaways

The data we used to create this graphic is listed in the table below.

RankCountryKg per personPounds per person 1🇸🇬 Singapore76168 2🇦🇺 Australia59130 3🇴🇲 Oman56123 4🇳🇱 Netherlands55121 5🇧🇪 Belgium55121 6🇮🇱 Israel55121 7🇭🇰 Hong Kong55121 8🇨🇭 Switzerland53117 9🇺🇸 U.S.53117 10🇦🇪 UAE52115 11🇨🇱 Chile51112 12🇰🇷 S. Korea4497 13🇬🇧 UK4497 14🇰🇼 Kuwait4088 15🇳🇿 New Zealand3986 16🇮🇪 Ireland3986 17🇫🇮 Finland3884 18🇯🇵 Japan3782 19🇫🇷 France3679 20🇸🇮 Slovenia3577

Countries from all around the world are present in this ranking, highlighting how plastic waste isn’t concentrated in any one region.

It’s also interesting to note how most of the countries in this top 20 ranking are wealthier, more developed nations. These nations have higher levels of consumption, with greater access to packaged goods, take-out services, and disposable products, all of which rely on single-use plastics.

Where’s China and India?

Note that we’ve visualized plastic waste per capita, which is different from the total amount of waste produced by a country. It is for this reason that major polluters, such as China and India, are not present in this ranking.

It’s also worth noting that this

Emissions Environement garbage Green oceans plastic waste pollution ranking

How People Get Around in America, Europe, and Asia

Published

1 hour ago

May 8, 2024 Graphics/Design:

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

How People Get Around in America, Europe, and Asia

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

This chart highlights the popularity of different transportation types in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, calculated by modal share.

Data for this article and visualization is sourced from ‘The ABC of Mobility’, a research paper by Rafael Prieto-Curiel (Complexity Science Hub) and Juan P. Ospina (EAFIT University), accessed through ScienceDirect.

The authors gathered their modal share data through travel surveys, which focused on the primary mode of transportation a person employs for each weekday trip. Information from 800 cities across 61 countries was collected for this study.

North American Car Culture Contrasts with the Rest of the World

In the U.S. and Canada, people heavily rely on cars to get around, no matter the size of the city. There are a few exceptions of course, such as New York, Toronto, and smaller college towns across the United States.

Region🚗 Cars🚌 Public Transport🚶 Walking/Biking North America*92%5%4% Central America23%42%35% South America29%40%31% Northern Europe48%29%24% Western Europe43%24%34% Southern Europe50%24%25% Eastern Europe35%40%25% Southeastern Asia44%43%13% Western Asia43%28%29% Southern Asia22%39%39% Eastern Asia19%46%35% World51%26%22%
Note: *Excluding Mexico. Percentages are rounded.

As a result, North America’s share of public transport and active mobility (walking and biking) is the lowest amongst all surveyed regions by a significant amount.

On the other hand, public transport reigns supreme in South and Central America as well as Southern and Eastern Asia. It ties with cars in Southeastern Asia, and is eclipsed by cars in Western Asia.

As outlined in the paper, Europe sees more city-level differences in transport popularity.

For example, Utrecht, Netherlands prefers walking and biking. People in Paris and London like using their extensive transit systems. And in Manchester and Rome, roughly two out of three journeys are by car.

asia Automotive biking Canada car culture Cars Culture europe Green london Manchester Misc modal share netherlands north america paris public transit rome south america transport transport popularity transport share transport type travel U.S. walking