Twenty companies account for over 40% of all CO₂ emitted by the global fossil fuel sector

Around 20 oil, gas, coal and cement companies were responsible for 40.8% of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from the fossil sector in 2023, totaling 17.5 gigatonnes of this gas. In addition, 16 of these 20 companies are state-owned. Among them, Chinese companies stand out, mainly public ones, which alone accounted for 23% of all emissions.

These are some of the conclusions drawn from a report prepared by the British research center InfluenceMap based on its Carbon Majors database, in which they track the contribution to climate change of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers and cement companies. In total, they have counted the activity of 169 companies active in 2023, the last year for which they have updated data. And, according to these experts, despite the fact that the impacts of the climate crisis are intensifying, the emissions of these companies grew by 0.7% in 2023 compared to 2022.

The company that emitted the most worldwide was Saudi Aramco, the state-owned company of Saudi Arabia. It is followed by Coal India, CHN Energy, National Iranian Oil Co, Jinneng Group and Gazprom, all also controlled by governments, which accumulate almost 20% of carbon dioxide from the fossil sector. This is the main greenhouse gas and, therefore, the main culprit of global warming that affects humanity in the form of an increase in average temperatures and more severe and frequent extreme weather events, according to scientific evidence.

The presence of public companies at the top of the list is overwhelming. To find the first private equity company, you have to go down to the 14th position: ExxonMobil. Within the category of companies owned by investors, Chevron, Shell, TotalEnergies and BP follow. These five oil companies accounted for 4.9% of global CO₂ emissions in 2023. The Spanish company Repsol, with 0.2% of global carbon dioxide, occupies position 89 on that list.

Emmett Connaire, an analyst at InfluenceMap and co-author of the study, said in a statement that this analysis reveals that “despite global climate commitments, a small group of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers are significantly increasing production and emissions.” He also highlights “the disproportionate impact that these companies have on the climate crisis.” But he also warns that some of them are beginning to face legal action in the United States.

The work collected in Carbon Majors is playing an important role in this movement, as it is being used by activists and lawyers to assess corporate responsibility under climate liability laws passed in states such as New York and Vermont. In addition, other researchers have used the database to quantify the role of fossil fuel companies in intensifying extreme heat waves. It has also been used to support a complaint filed by the climate change law group ClientEarth against the giant investment fund BlackRock.

To calculate the footprint of each company, researchers take into account two types of emissions. The most important one — mainly in the case of oil, gas and coal — is the emissions from the combustion of marketed products, that is, the carbon dioxide released when fossil fuels are burned to generate energy. To these are added the direct and operational emissions linked to the production of each company.

In terms of sources, coal remained the largest source of emissions in 2023, contributing 41.1% of the total. But researchers are particularly concerned about the evolution of the cement sector, whose emissions increased by 6.5% in 2023 compared to the previous year. “This highlights the critical importance of efforts to decarbonize the industry worldwide,” the authors of the report highlighted.

Historical responsibilities

One of the chief values of this database, which was launched in 2013 and has been growing in information over the last decade, is that it attempts to trace the footprint not only of current emissions, but also of past ones, from 1854 to the present, of 180 industrial producers. The main conclusion is that more than a third of the CO₂ emitted since the Industrial Revolution can be attributed to just 26 of these entities.

In terms of historical emissions, the top two emitters are state-owned coal producers in the former Soviet Union and China, followed by Saudi Aramco, Chevron and ExxonMobil. Altogether, these five producers account for 20.9% of emissions since 1854, according to data collected by the Carbon Majors initiative.

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