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

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.