100 Companies are Responsible for 71% of GHG Emissions
According to the Carbon Majors Database, the most comprehensive dataset of historic company greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions ever compiled, just a tiny fraction of all the companies in the world are responsible for the vast majority of GHG emissions.
Of all the hundreds of thousands of companies in the world, only 100 of them have been responsible for 71% of the global GHG emissions since 1988.
The Carbon Disclosure Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to environmental reporting in order to drive disclosure, insight, and action towards a sustainable economy, tracted active fossil fuel producers since 1988, the year in which human-induced climate change was officially recognized through the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC).
The CDP found that since 1988, over half of the world’s industrial emissions can be traced back to just 25 state companies and entities. The rest of the emissions (32%) come from public investor owned companies. Moreover, 52% of all global industrial GHGs emitted since the start of the industrial revolution have been traced to these 100 fossil fuel producers.
Unfortunately, fossil fuel companies and their products have released more emission in the last 28 years than in the previous 237 years of the Industrial revolution.
Here are the top ten companies responsible for C02 emissions since 1988:
- China Coal 14.3 %
- Saudi Aramco 4.5 %
- Gazprom OAO 3.9 %
- National Iranian Oil Co 2.3 %
- ExxonMobil Corp 2.0 %
- Coal India 1.9 %
- Petróleos Mexicanos 1.9 %
- Russia Coal 1.9 %
- Royal Dutch Shell PLC 1.7 %
- China National Petroleum Corp 1.6 %
Source: New report shows just 100 companies are source of over 70% of emissions