Methodology
Every number on this site is built only from measurable, open data. Here is exactly how the score works: simply first, then in detail.
Each country and company’s emissions are added up over a year. The biggest emitter gets a score near 100. The score then nudges up or down depending on whether they’re getting worse or better over time. That’s the whole idea: bigger and rising means a higher Climate Damage Score.
The Climate Damage Score
The score runs from 0 to 100 and is built from two measurable things only: how much an entity emits, and which way that’s trending.
logScore = log₁₀(E) / log₁₀(E_max) × 100
trendModifier = clamp( annual % change ÷ 10, −5, +5 )
Why a log scale? Emissions span a huge range. The largest oil state emits hundreds of times more than a mid-sized utility. On a straight scale, almost everyone would score near zero. A log scale (like the Richter scale for earthquakes) keeps the ranking meaningful. The biggest emitter anchors the top at 100.
Trend. A line is fit through up to five years of emissions. Roughly +1 point per 10%/year of growth, capped at ±5. The adjustment stays small so size always dominates; a fast-improving giant is still bigger than a small one.
Data confidence (shown, never scored)
Confidence is about the measurement itself, not the emitter’s behaviour. A polluter’s score is never lowered just because the data about it is fuzzier; that would be unfair and would reward staying hidden. Instead a separate confidence badge is shown, combining how well Climate TRACE measures the underlying assets with how much of an entity’s emissions can be tied to a named owner.
Attribution: who gets the blame
Entities (companies, state producers) are ranked, with individual assets as the proof beneath them. Each asset’s emissions are split across the owners Climate TRACE lists for it. The dataset records owners but not exact ownership percentages, so emissions are split equally across the named owners. Where no owner is known, those emissions are set aside as an honest “unattributed” figure rather than blamed on the wrong party. They are never ranked as a villain.
Everyday equivalences: how tonnes are converted
Raw tonnes are never the headline. Every entity, country and share-card page shows the same emissions as something an ordinary person can picture: cars, flights, beef burgers, phone charges. The reader can swap between them using the pill row above the headline. The conversion factors are the fixed, cited figures below; nothing is approximated server-side beyond what the source itself reports.
- 1 petrol car for a year ≈ 4.6 t CO₂ (US EPA average)
- 1 home’s annual energy ≈ 2.7 t CO₂
- 1 large (1 GW) coal plant ≈ 4 Mt = megatonne: one million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent CO₂/year
| Equivalent | kg CO₂e per unit | Approximate? | Source / note |
|---|---|---|---|
| cars driven for a year | 4,600 | No | Average US passenger car ≈ 4.6 t CO₂/yr (US EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies). |
| round-trip London → New York flights | 1,000 | No | Round-trip economy London↔New York ≈ 1.0 t CO₂ per passenger (DEFRA / ICAO ranges). |
| phone charges | 0.00822 | No | Charging a smartphone ≈ 8.22 g CO₂e per full charge (US EPA / IEA derivation). |
| hot showers | 0.5 | Yes | 10-minute hot shower ≈ 0.5 kg CO₂e on a mixed grid (varies widely by fuel and water-heater type). |
| cups of tea or coffee | 0.05 | Yes | Boiling enough water for one cup of tea or coffee ≈ 50 g CO₂e on a mixed grid. |
| beef burgers | 3 | No | Single beef burger ≈ 3 kg CO₂e (Poore & Nemecek 2018, Science). |
| plastic straws' entire footprint | 0.0015 | No | Standard polypropylene straw ≈ 0.4 g; PP lifecycle emissions ≈ 3.5–4 kg CO₂e per kg (PlasticsEurope eco-profile / Franklin Associates LCA range), so ≈ 1.5 g CO₂e per straw. |
| people's entire yearly carbon footprints | 4,700 | No | Global average per-person footprint ≈ 4.7 t CO₂e/yr (Our World in Data, 2022). |
| trees soaking it up for a year | 21 | Yes | A mature tree absorbs ≈ 21 kg CO₂/yr, varying hugely by species, climate and age (US Forest Service). |
The three rows marked Yes (showers, kettle, trees) depend on the local electricity grid, water-heater type or tree species and age, so they are badged as approximate in the UI. Cars, flights, burgers, jeans and people use widely-cited single-figure benchmarks.
What's deliberately left out
For now the score uses only measurable emissions and their trend. PR claims, lobbying records, litigation history and ESG ratings are deliberately not folded into the headline number, because there is no globally consistent, free, objective dataset for them yet. The model is built so these could be added later as separate, clearly-labelled indicators, never quietly baked into the headline score.
Reproduce it yourself
The data and the model are public. The same input data and the formulas above always produce the same score: no hidden weights, no training on private data. The reference year is 2024. Rankings use the most recent complete calendar year of Climate TRACE data, so every company and country is compared over the same 12 months. The reference year advances automatically once the source publishes the next full year. Climate TRACE publishes new months on a lag and revises earlier estimates; each monthly refresh picks both up. Refreshes from Climate TRACE on the 1st of each month.
Sources
- Climate TRACE · asset-level emissions & ownership (CC BY 4.0)
- World Bank · population (for per-person figures)
- Carbon Majors · historical producer emissions (context; Non-commercial)
The formulas on this page, the equivalence table above and the coverage caveats on the data & coverage page together form the complete specification.
About these rankings
Everything ranked on this site is a measurement of emissions, nothing more. Company and state-entity pages rank asset-attributed operational emissions: what the power plants, oilfields, mines and other facilities an entity owns or operates released in the reference year (2024), according to Climate TRACE (CC BY 4.0). Where an asset lists several owners, its emissions are split across them. This is not a full corporate footprint: consumer and supply-chain (Scope 3) emissions are excluded. A high rank is a measured quantity, not a legal finding and not an allegation of wrongdoing. Nothing on this site is legal, investment or regulatory advice.
Country pages use a different lens: territorial totals, the sum of tracked emissions inside a country’s borders, attributed to named operators where ownership is known. A country’s rank and a company’s rank answer different questions and are never mixed in one table. Comparisons, the daily page and the guess game reuse these same attributed figures, so the same caveats apply to both sides of any matchup.
The producers page uses a third lens: cumulative production-linked emissions from Heede 2014 and the Carbon Majors database. It counts the CO₂ released when the fuels a producer extracted were eventually burned. That is a historical production attribution, not a current operating footprint.
Coverage varies. Climate TRACE measures some sectors almost completely and others only in part, and not every asset has a named owner, so company tables skew toward sectors with clear ownership. The data & coverage page shows how much of each sector and country is traced. Spot something wrong? Email corrections@climatevillains.org.