Switzerland has reduced its domestic greenhouse-gas emissions by 27.3% since 1990, according to the latest figures from the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). Total emissions fell to 40.1m tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2024, about 0.5m tonnes less than a year earlier, and will be reported to the UN climate secretariat. The steepest decline has come from buildings, where emissions are down by 47% over the period, largely reflecting the rapid spread of heat pumps. Industry has also cut emissions substantially, to 8.9m tonnes—around a third below 1990 levels.
For the first time, Switzerland has included negative emissions in its official inventory, albeit on a tiny scale—just 705 tonnes of CO₂. These stem from a pilot project led by ETH Zurich in partnership with Neustark, in which carbon captured at a biogas plant is stored in recycled concrete. Such reporting is permitted under the UN climate framework, and Switzerland appears to be the first country to include negative emissions under the Paris Agreement.
Progress elsewhere has been slower. Transport remains the largest source of emissions, at 13.4m tonnes, accounting for 33.5% of the total and only about 10% below its 1990 level. Agriculture, at 6.6m tonnes, has barely changed, while emissions from synthetic gases, such as those from refrigerators, and waste management have remained broadly flat. Other sources amount to 8.9m tonnes, some 13% below 1990 levels. International aviation and shipping, reported separately under UN rules, generated a further 5.5m tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2024.
Switzerland’s formal climate targets, set under its CO₂ Act and international commitments, aim for net-zero emissions by 2050, with an interim goal of cutting emissions by at least 50% from 1990 levels by 2030. That implies a sharp acceleration: from today’s level, emissions must fall by roughly another 14m tonnes within the decade.
On a per-capita basis, the decline is more pronounced. Emissions have fallen from roughly 7.6–7.8 tonnes per person in 1990 to about 4.4–4.5 tonnes in 2024—a drop of around 40–45%. Population growth of about a third over the period has masked part of this improvement in the headline figures. Yet both Switzerland’s targets and the Paris framework focus on territorial emissions. Once emissions embedded in imports, aviation and consumption are taken into account, the country’s overall carbon footprint per person is considerably higher, and the long-term reduction correspondingly less marked.
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FOEN press release (in French) – Take a 5 minute French test now
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