Greenhouse Suppliers 100: A ranking of corporate producers of greenhouse gas precursors in the USA

Abstract

This paper presents the first comprehensive database of corporate suppliers of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas supply stocks in the U.S. economy. The database is a publicly available resource that adds value to existing information sources in two ways. First, we combine several high-quality public data sources, including the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), which reports on most products that would result in GHG emissions if those products were released, combusted, or oxidized, with the notable exception of coal, and data on coal from the US Energy Information Administration and the US Mine Safety and Health Administration. In this paper, we discuss the importance of coal as a GHG source and describe its exclusion from coverage by the GHGRP. Second, we aggregate facility-level data (on individual mines, wellheads, refineries, pipelines, and import facilities) to the corporate level, with the corporate final parent as the unit of analysis. While the data collection of the EPA focuses on individual facilities as the reporting units, the analysis of corporate ownership shifts attention to control and responsibility. Here we use these data to explore the corporate concentration of GHG activity, and we compare the degree of concentration between GHG supply and emissions, and between the facility level and the corporate level. Finally, we discuss current and potential applications and possible extensions, such as the development of environmental-justice metrics for fossil-fuel suppliers.

Keywords:

• Climate change
• fossil fuels
• greenhouse gas
• right-to-know
• US EPA

Acknowledgments

We thank George P. Fox for outstanding research assistance. The authors acknowledge the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute (Stewart et al. 2017) for providing HPC database, storage, and consulting resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These analyses cite Kopp et al. (1999) and Hargrave (1998), which predate the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.

2 See http://greenhouse100.org/ and http://toxic100.org/.

3 See https://climateaccountability.org/carbon-majors/ and https://globalenergymonitor.org/.

4 https://peri.umass.edu/u-s-coal-producers-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions-2020

5 Kilograms of CO₂ per short ton of coal:

Coal (all types): 1827.04

Anthracite: 2592.33

Bituminous: 2236.08

Subbituminous: 1699.78

Lignite: 1275.08

Coke: 3254.16

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/co2_vol_mass.php, last revised February 9, 2022.

6 https://grconnect.com/greensup100/ry2020/

7 See https://www.oecd.org/env/ehs/pollutant-release-transfer-register/ and https://www.oecd.org/env_prtr_data/ for consolidated and partially harmonized access to individual national PRTR.