Why does Luxembourg have such high levels of greenhouse gas emissions?

January 12, 2007 · by · in Environment · 1 Comment

I don’t understand this at all.

Tonnnes of CO2 equivalents per person in 1990:

  1. Luxembourg: 35.5
  2. Australia: 25.7
  3. US: 23.8
  4. Canada: 21.5

In 2003:

  1. Australia: 26.1
  2. Luxembourg: 24.9
  3. Canada: 23.9
  4. US: 23.4

I can understand why Canada, Australia and the US are in the top four. But Luxembourg?

One comment

  1. Tim Worstall's avatar
    Tim Worstall · ·

    Two possible reasons come to mind. Note please, these are possibilities although both rest on hte same basic premise.
    Luxembourg really isn’t a country. 400,000 people only. It’s something of a historical accident that it wasn’t incorporated into one or other much larger nation at some point. But I’m sure we could find other urban regions of almost anywhere that have 400,000 people with much higher emissions than the rest of a larger nation. Hoboken NJ for example? DC with all those cars and heating in the winter, AC in the summer?
    (Sorry to use US examples on a Canadian blog, bad form I know. I would have used the St James alumina plants but they’re all hydro powered.).
    Those parts of the Rhineland that still have heavy industry?
    Two further things to note about Luxembourg. It’s stinking rich as a country (but much less of an outlier if we look again at urban centres and their hinterlands) and we do expect a correlation at least between wealth and emissions? Second, I think it’s still got a huge steel works in it. Very emitting they are.