Wars are counted in deaths, displacement, and ruined cities. They should also be counted in carbon, toxic smoke, and poisoned land. Two active conflicts make the point starkly: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth year of climate accounting, and the 2026 Iran war, which released millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases in its first fortnight alone.
Military emissions are usually invisible in national climate inventories. That does not make them small.
Ukraine: years of compounding damage
The Initiative on GHG Accounting of War, working with Ukrainian civil society including Ecoaction, estimates that from 24 February 2022 to 23 February 2026 the war drove about 311 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (tCO₂e). That is on the scale of France’s annual emissions, or roughly half of Germany’s. Applying a social cost of carbon of $185 per tonne puts the climate damage claim above $57 billion.
The fourth year alone added about 75 million tCO₂e. The breakdown shows why “tank fuel” is only part of the story:
- Warfare (fuel for aircraft, armour, logistics, and related losses): the largest share, about 37% of the cumulative total.
- Landscape fires: combat sparks in hot, dry conditions that firefighters cannot safely reach. These surged again in year four and overlap with the wildfire crisis across Europe’s wider EFFIS monitoring zone.
- Reconstruction: concrete, steel, and energy to rebuild what was destroyed. Post-conflict rebuild often rivals or exceeds wartime emissions.
- Energy infrastructure hits, civil aviation rerouting, and refugee movement add further slices.
Direct pollution sits beside the carbon ledger: damaged industrial sites leak chemicals; burned fuel depots send black plumes across farmland; munitions leave heavy metals in soils and water. The climate number is a proxy for a wider environmental wound.
Iran: millions of tonnes in two weeks
Analysis involving researchers at Queen Mary University of London, Lancaster University, and the Climate and Community Institute estimated that the first 14 days of the Iran conflict (28 February to 14 March 2026) generated more than 5 million tCO₂e, more than Iceland’s entire annual emissions. Reporting summarised the main sources:
- Destroyed homes and civilian buildings: about 2.4 million tCO₂e
- Burning and destruction of fuel and oil facilities: about 1.88 million tCO₂e
- Fuel burned in combat and support operations: about 529,000 tCO₂e
- Embodied carbon in lost equipment, plus missiles and drones: smaller but material shares
Attacks on oil infrastructure do double damage: they spike greenhouse gases and release toxic smoke that endangers nearby communities and ecosystems. Rebuilding desalination plants, housing, ports, and energy systems will push the total far higher if the pattern from Gaza, Lebanon, and Ukraine holds: reconstruction emissions can dwarf the fighting itself.
Why this belongs on a pollution site
Fossil fuels power the jets, tanks, and generators. Oil depots and refineries become both targets and pollution sources. Landscape fires link the Ukraine front to the same heat-and-drought physics driving Europe’s record wildfires. And every tonne emitted under the fog of war is a tonne that national net-zero plans rarely admit.
Transparency is the first fix. Conflict emissions need the same scrutiny we apply to cement plants and shipping. Accountability mechanisms (Ukraine’s climate damage claim under the Register of Damage is one example) treat greenhouse gases as reparable harm, not an externality of strategy.
Until then, the planet keeps the receipt: carbon in the air, soot in lungs, and contaminated ground that outlasts any ceasefire.
Further reading
- Climate damage caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine (48 months) (Initiative on GHG Accounting of War / Ecoaction)
- 5m tonnes of CO₂ in 14 days of Iran war (The Guardian)
- Queen Mary summary of Iran war emissions analysis