Czech J. Anim. Sci., 2025, 70(7):253-266 | DOI: 10.17221/26/2025-CJAS

Regional patterns and cluster analysis of agricultural methane emissions in the EU-27 countriesOriginal Paper

Klára Bartoňová ORCID...1, Jan Saro ORCID...2, Mansoor Maitah ORCID...1, Jaromír Ducháček ORCID...3
1 Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague – Suchdol, Czech Republic
2 Department of Systems Engineering, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague – Suchdol, Czech Republic
3 Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague – Suchdol, Czech Republic

Agricultural methane emissions strongly contribute to global greenhouse gas production. Under these circumstances, meeting international climate goals, including the Global Methane Pledge or the European Green Deal, requires developing targeted mitigation strategies. However, research using advanced clustering techniques in a multilevel context remains scarce and mostly limited to CO2 emissions. This lack of time-series studies addressing regional variability hinders efforts to develop effective mitigation strategies. This study addresses three main research questions: (i) What are the main trends in agricultural methane emissions in the EU-27 countries from 2013 to 2022? (ii) How can the EU countries be classified based on agricultural methane emissions per capita? (iii) What is the impact of selected agricultural and economic indicators, including the number of live bovine animals and land use, on the clustering of methane emissions? Combining hierarchical and k-means clustering with trend analysis, this research integrates data from Eurostat and the World Bank, thereby classifying the EU-27 countries into four clusters based on their agricultural practices and methane emissions profiles. The results highlight distinct emission patterns across the EU-27 regions, with farming systems characterised by high stocking rates and intensive production generating the highest per capita emissions. By contrast, extensive systems with lower animal density exhibit reduced methane intensities. These findings underscore the need to devise effective, region-specific, data-driven policies and strategies for mitigating methane emissions.

Keywords: emissions mitigation; global methane pledge; global warming; greenhouse gas; livestock; trend analysis

Received: February 21, 2025; Accepted: June 11, 2025; Prepublished online: July 28, 2025; Published: July 29, 2025  Show citation

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Bartoňová K, Saro J, Maitah M, Ducháček J. Regional patterns and cluster analysis of agricultural methane emissions in the EU-27 countries. Czech J. Anim. Sci. 2025;70(7):253-266. doi: 10.17221/26/2025-CJAS.
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