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 in the snapshot 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, meaning 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.

No. Every rank on this site is a measurement of emissions, not a verdict. Appearing here is not a finding of wrongdoing, and nothing on the site is legal, investment or regulatory advice. The About these rankings section spells out exactly what the rankings do and do not claim.

The snapshot refreshes monthly from the Climate TRACE API; a fresh run lands on the 1st of each month and picks up newly published months and revisions to earlier estimates. The reference year of the rankings is shown in the trust bar at the top of every page and is currently 2024.

Climate TRACE measures emissions every month from satellites and sensors, but recent months are published on a lag and are revised as better inputs arrive. Rankings therefore use the most recent complete calendar year, currently 2024, so every company and country is compared over the same 12 months. Ranking on a partial year would skew the table with missing months and seasonal effects. The site still refreshes monthly, which pulls in newer data and revisions, and the reference year advances automatically as soon as Climate TRACE publishes the next full year. The methodology page has the detail.

Yes. The site is free, has no paywall and runs no ads. The underlying Climate TRACE data is CC BY 4.0 and the methodology is published in full. Cite any figure 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.

Territorial emissions are everything Climate TRACE tracks inside a country’s borders, whoever owns the source; that is what the country table ranks. Attributed emissions are the subset tied to a named owner or operator, split across the owners listed for each asset; that is what the company table ranks. The two lenses answer different questions and are never mixed in one table.

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

Raw tonnes of CO₂e are hard to picture, so every headline figure is also translated into everyday terms: petrol cars driven for a year, London↔New York flights, beef burgers, phone charges and more. Each conversion uses a fixed, cited factor. The unit can be switched using the pill row above the headline on any entity, country or share page. The full conversion table with sources is in the methodology.

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.

The data and methodology are fully public. Every table exports as CSV under CC BY 4.0; cite Climate TRACE and Climate Villains. The full scoring model, equivalence factors and coverage caveats are on the methodology page so you can reproduce or extend the analysis with your own tooling.

The Investors page multiplies each disclosed stake percentage by the company’s annual attributed emissions, then adds that up across every holding in the curated ownership data. A 10% stake in a company emitting 100 million tonnes counts as 10 million tonnes of exposure. Stakes come from public filings and annual reports, each linked as a source. Exposure is context, not blame: index funds hold shares on behalf of clients and do not run the companies.

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.

Every entity page has a Report a correction link that opens a pre-addressed email to corrections@climatevillains.org. For anything else (a country figure, an investor listing, a broken link) email the same address with a link to the page and, if possible, a primary source. Corrections are checked against the underlying Climate TRACE data and shipped with the next refresh.