The six largest publicly traded oil companies—known as “oil supermajors”—accounted for more than 35 percent of the global carbon footprint of the petroleum products sector from 1980 to 2019, according to a study by the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment. Using a supply-chain approach, the report uncovers the magnitude and complexity of the carbon emissions of BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies. Understanding the scale of carbon emissions is fundamental to outlining paths to reduced reliance on fossil fuels, and this method may correct for underestimates and underreporting. The four decades of emissions are also presented in an Infogram to help visualize the findings.
