In tandem with the beginning of COP25, the UN climate conference, the project Compiling the Public Picture: The Top 100 Greenhouse Gas Emitters was launched, to focus research on large companies who have the greatest leverage and responsibility.
Through this project, the WikiRate and its community are collecting research and data from a wide range of methodologies and putting them on WikiRate.org for open analysis, where citizens, alongside policy makers and investors, can learn concretely about companies’ impacts.
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are a major contributor to climate change and are governed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the subsequent UN ‘Kyoto Protocol’. In many countries, it is compulsory to report the GHG emissions on an yearly basis.
To make the results more reliable and consistent, the GHG protocol breaks down the scope of emission into three parts: Scope 1, 2 & 3.
Scope 1 |
An organization’s direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that come from sources (physical units or processes that release GHG into the atmosphere) that are owned or controlled by the organization. |
Scope 2 |
An organization’s energy indirect GHG emissions result from the generation of the electricity, heating, cooling, and steam which it purchased from other organizations for its own consumption. |
Scope 3 |
Other indirect (Scope 3) emissions are a consequence of the activities of the organization, but occur from sources not owned or controlled by the organization. |
For this project, we are looking at the Direct (Scope 1) and Indirect Emissions (Scope 2) both separately and combined.
To better contextualize the amounts, we calculate how many tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions (scope 1+2 combined, CO2 equivalent) companies report per dollar of revenue, and how many tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1 and 2 combined, CO2 equivalent) companies have emitted per employee for a given year.
The collected data is then visualized in this chart:
Image credit: https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/car. Car vector created by Freepik
Use the filters to explore the data.
At the bottom of the page, there are links to download the current answer results in CSV or JSON format.
Clicking on those links will provide an export URL that will allow you to download answers with the current filters.
CSV downloads will allow a maximum of 100 answers per request.
To download more answers than that, you will need to alter the filters. Learn more on exporting the data here.