The revised Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines for national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories recommends that more comprehensive and thus more reliable characteristics of the local fossil fuels should be used for the national GHG inventory calculations. This paper deal with the carbon emission characteristics of low-calorific lignite recovered from the Kolubara open-pit mine. The samples of coal were carefully selected in order to cover the net calorific value, ash and water content of the broad spectrum of the quality of the raw lignite supplied to the Serbian thermal power plants. Correlation analysis of the laboratory analysis data gave a linear dependency of the net calorific value on the combustible content in the coal samples. Also, linear correlation between the carbon content and the net calorific value was found. The regression analysis of experimentally determined coal characteristics implies that the carbon emission factor is dependent on the net calorific value. For the subset of raw lignite samples with the net calorific value Qdr = 6 ? 10 MJ/kg, that is most representative for current and near future use for power generation in Serbian thermal power plants, the linear dependency CEFr (tC/TJ) = 34.407 - 0.5891?Qdr (MJ/kg) was proposed. Regarding the net calorific ranges of samples examined, the raw Kolubara lignite carbon emission factor is considerably higher than those recommended by IPCC Tier 1 method of 27.6 tC/TJ.