For journalists & researchers
A 60-second briefing on what Climate Villains is, how it’s built, and the facts and assets you can quote freely.
Climate Villains is a free, open-source league table of the world’s biggest greenhouse-gas polluters — built on Climate TRACE open data and refreshed monthly.
What it is — and isn’t
What this IS
An emissions ranking with citations, in plain English, free for anyone to use. Every figure traces back to open data.
What this IS NOT
Not an accusation, not an ESG rating, not a campaign site, not financial advice, and not a substitute for Climate TRACE itself — which we attribute on every page.
Methodology in one paragraph
The Climate Damage Score is log-scaled annual emissions plus a small bounded trend modifier (0–100). Data confidence is shown as a separate badge, never folded into the score. We never include subjective inputs like ESG ratings, lobbying scores, or PR claims. Read the full methodology →
Three quotes you can lift
The single biggest annual emitter we track — measuring what an entity itself emits each year — is NTPC Ltd at 327 Mt CO₂e — the equivalent of 71.1M petrol cars driven for a year.
Source: Climate Villains, reference year 2024. Entity profile.
The largest fossil-fuel producer by cumulative historical emissions is Saudi Aramco at 59.3 Gt CO₂e since 1965.
Source: Heede 2014 + Carbon Majors database (carbonmajors.org). Producers page.
Across our curated dataset of 36 major emitters, the median emissions intensity is 2.02 Mt CO₂e per $1bn revenue.
Source: Climate Villains curated Follow-the-Money dataset, reference year 2024. Investors page.
Share assets
PNGs rendered on-demand. Right-click → Save As, or use the download link below.
How to cite
Climate Villains (2026). The league table of the world's biggest climate polluters. https://climate-villains.vercel.app/ Built on Climate TRACE (CC BY 4.0).
Sources
- Climate TRACE — asset-level emissions (CC BY 4.0).
- World Bank Population (SP.POP.TOTL) — per-capita denominators.
- Carbon Majors database — Heede 2014 historical fossil-fuel producer attribution.
- Wikipedia, annual reports & regulator filings — curated revenue and ownership context.
- github.com/pravindurgani/climate-villains — full source code & pipeline.
Contact
Open an issue at github.com/pravindurgani/climate-villains/issues.