Top Firms Linked to $28 Trillion in Climate Damage: Study

A new study in Nature estimates that 111 of the world's largest firms together ran up $28 trillion in climate damage. The research, by a group of scholars at Dartmouth College, seeks to quantify individual corporate emissions against individual global economic consequences. With the aid of computer simulations and historical emissions data, scientists monitored how greenhouse gases emitted during the production of fossil fuels helped fuel global warming and subsequent economic losses. More than 50% of the damage is caused by only ten producers of fossil fuels, namely Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, the National Iranian Oil Company, Pemex, Coal India, and the British Coal Corporation.

The research places the impact of emissions as far back as 137 years and attributed them to current global average temperature increase. Researchers performed 1,000 simulations to find out by how much lower the temperature on Earth would have been if these firms had emitted nothing. To illustrate, Chevron's emissions alone resulted in an increase in average surface temperature by 0.025°C. Besides, the scientists replicated the impact of such emissions on the temperature of the five warmest days every year and attributed them to economic productivity loss.

According to the researchers, for every 1% of the greenhouse gases emitted since 1990, there has been some $502 billion of heat-related damage. It does not factor in loss due to so-called extreme events like hurricanes, floods, or droughts, indicating the total monetary cost might be even greater. The modeling technique relies on standard climate attribution techniques, the exact same ones scientists employ to determine the contribution of climate change to a specific extreme weather event.

The study indicates a building scientific consensus that the effects of emissions from specific companies can be traced and measured. This contradicts earlier arguments that specific emitters cannot be attributed to specific environmental damages. By making these connections more apparent, the study strengthens the scientific foundation of climate litigation and regulatory change.

Even though there are at least 68 climate cases around the world, the majority in the United States, none of them have managed to hold a large carbon emitter legally accountable to date. The research offers a detailed analysis of how business emissions compare to economic damages from heat, potentially presenting new accountability measures. The authors believe that better attribution science can impact future policy-making and legal cases.

Outside specialists who looked at the study praised the consistency of the methodology, noting that such an attribution method would just continue to improve as more research teams begin to use similar methods. Critics and pundits estimate that the $28 trillion is likely an underestimate based on the sheer number of indirect or cumulative impacts of climate that have been left out of this estimate.

In spite of the clear connections made in the study, none of the corporations named in the study—Aramco, Chevron, BP, and ExxonMobil—have publicly replied or accepted the findings. Some, like Shell, have refused to comment. The absence of corporate responsibility continues to be an obstacle to making significant progress in cutting emissions and addressing global climate change.

The research contends that society has come to the point where the climate crisis is causing so much economic harm that the aggregate effect of corporations' individual actions is now glaringly apparent. This information could be a watershed moment in international discussion of corporate responsibility and climate justice, particularly as global temperatures and related costs continue to increase.

The authors emphasize that without organized accountability, fossil fuel firms will keep operating without incurring the financial costs of their emissions. Highlighting this issue is important as nations and policymakers aim to implement equitable and efficient climate solutions under agreements like the Paris Agreement.

As legal frameworks develop and citizens' pressure mounts for environmental responsibility, this kind of scientific evidence will become more central to informing climate policy and business practice. The report contributes to mounting pressure on large emitters to shift towards sustainable development and make a contribution to mitigation, instead of exporting the cost of climate harm to the world's people.

Source/Credits:
Content by The Associated Press through Phys.org | Original study in Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08751-3