Frequently asked questions

It depends on the question. By territorial emissions today, China is the largest emitter, followed by the United States and India. By operator emissions in a single year, large power utilities (NTPC, Eskom) and state oil companies dominate. By historical production-linked emissions, Saudi Aramco is the single largest producer in the Carbon Majors record (Heede 2014, 1965–2018 cumulative).

The score (0–100) is built from log-scaled annual emissions, anchored so the largest emitter sits at 100, plus a small trend modifier of ±5 points based on the year-on-year change. Confidence is shown separately and is never used to lower the score. See the full methodology for the formula.

Asset-level emissions and ownership come from Climate TRACE (CC BY 4.0). Population data for per-capita figures comes from the World Bank. The historical producer table is sourced to Heede 2014 and the Carbon Majors database.

It is the best open data currently available. Climate TRACE measures emissions from satellite and sensor data; coverage varies by sector. About 53% of the asset emissions we pull can be tied to a named owner. See data & coverage for full sector and country labels.

Companies are ranked by their attributed operational emissions in the reference year — the emissions from the assets Climate TRACE links to them as owner or operator. Production-linked emissions (what gets released when the fuels they extracted are burned) are shown separately on the Producers page. Both lenses are valid; they answer different questions.

The site reports measured emissions only and links every figure back to its open-data source. It does not allege wrongdoing — producing or emitting under existing rules is lawful everywhere it appears here. The Producers page states this explicitly.

The snapshot refreshes monthly from the Climate TRACE API — a fresh run lands on the 1st of each month. The reference year is shown in the trust bar at the top of every page and is currently 2024.

Yes. The site is free, has no paywall and runs no ads. The source code is MIT-licensed and the underlying Climate TRACE data is CC BY 4.0. You can fork the project or cite any figure here as long as you credit Climate TRACE.

China’s territorial emissions are the largest in the world because it has the world’s biggest coal-power fleet and leads global output of steel, cement and aluminium. The China country page shows the year-on-year trend and the per-capita figure alongside the total.

Operator attribution asks what an entity’s own assets emit in a year — power plants running, refineries operating, mines venting. Production attribution asks how much CO₂ was released when the fuels that entity extracted were burned, anywhere in the world. The first is on the company table; the second lives on the Producers page.

Confidence reflects how well we measure an entity, not how clean it is. It combines Climate TRACE’s per-asset confidence rating with how much of an entity’s emissions we can tie to a named owner. Lower confidence never lowers the Damage Score — that would unfairly reward staying hidden.

Climate TRACE does not yet attribute every emission source to a named owner. Diffuse sources like road transport, residential heating and most of agriculture rarely have a single named operator, so those tonnes appear in country and sector totals but not in the company table. See Data & coverage for the breakdown.

Climate Villains is open source. Clone the repository, run the pipeline against the Climate TRACE API and add your own scoring lens, or open an issue / pull request. The methodology page links to the full technical specification.

Yes. The Compare page puts any two countries or any two companies side-by-side with their emissions, trend, Climate Damage Score and data coverage, plus their largest sites.

Yes. The Map page plots the top 500 emitting assets worldwide, sized by tonnes of CO₂e and coloured by sector. Tap a dot for the facility’s name, country and owners.