Environmental Indicators Ireland 2025 - Global Context and Climate

Statistician's Comment

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (03 December 2025) published Environmental Indicators Ireland 2025 - Global Context and Climate.

Commenting on the release Reamonn McKeever, Statistician in the Environment Division of the CSO said: “Today, we publish the CSO’s 2025 release on Environmental Indicators Ireland – Global Context and Climate which covers 28 indicators under four key themes (See Editor’s Note below). This is the first of two releases covering environmental indicators in Ireland.  The second release, Environmental Indicators Ireland 2025 – Economy and Biodiversity, will be published later in Quarter 4 2025.

Today’s release highlights key environmental indicators for Ireland, and places Ireland’s environmental performance within a global context. These are the most recent data sets available as it can take time to capture, measure and analyse climate-related data. At the global level we can see that:

• In terms of global warming, 2024 was the warmest year on record in the world between 1850 and 2024, as measured by global mean near surface temperature deviations compared with pre-industrial 1850-1899 levels. In 2024 Ireland recorded one of its warmest years on record also (the third highest since 1961 when data became available).
• China was the world’s greatest producer of greenhouse gases in 2023, with emissions of 14 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, up 211% from its 1990-1994 average and overtaking the USA. The Chinese figure accounted for 26% of the world’s total.
• Greenhouse gas emissions from India also increased by 160% over the average 1990-1994 figure. In contrast, EU-27 emissions fell by 33% over this period, with a smaller decrease in Ireland where average emissions were down 5.4% on 1990-1994 levels.
• Resource use (such as food consumption and energy usage) is an acknowledged driver of climate change. The concept “Domestic Material Consumption (DMC)” measures this. The world’s average DMC per capita increased from 9.1 tonnes per capita in 2000 to 11.6 in 2023. Sub-Saharan Africa had the lowest resource consumption per capita in 2023 at 4.6 tonnes, while Oceania had the highest resource consumption figure at 29.0 tonnes per capita in 2023. Ireland consumed 10.4 tonnes of DMC per capita in 2023.”

Editor's Note

Environmental Indicators Ireland was first published in 2012 on a biennial basis and moved to an annual release in 2018. This release is called Environmental Indicators Ireland 2025 - Global Context and Climate.

A total of 28 indicators covering four themes have been selected for this release. Many of the indicators are presented in a time-series format for Ireland, while the international context is shown by comparing Ireland with other countries and world regions for the latest year for which data is available. Learn more about the 28 indicators in the Background Notes 

The environment area is wide-ranging and the four themes cover the Global Context, Greenhouse Gases and Climate Change, Water and Land Use. A second release in the coming months will look at the thematic areas of the Environmental Economy, Air, Energy, Transport, Waste and Biodiversity.

We plan to create a hub for environmental data on our website in 2026 where users can easily access the breadth and depth of information that they need. Quarterly releases will also be issued on key themes.

The CSO wishes to thank the: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine; Environmental Protection Agency; Eurostat; Met Éireann; Our World in Data; the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre; and the United Nations for providing data and technical advice on the most appropriate indicators for Ireland.