Study links fossil fuel giants to $28 trillion in heat-driven economic losses

Emissions from companies such as Chevron, BP hit the Global South hardest, study finds

A recent study published in Nature has quantified economic losses from extreme heat caused by emissions from major fossil fuel producers. The research connects 111 companies—referred to as “carbon majors”—to GDP losses between 1991 and 2020, with $9 trillion of those losses attributable to the five top-emitting firms.

Tracing emissions to impact

The study used a three-part method. It simulated global temperatures with and without each company’s emissions. Then, it linked those emissions to local spikes in extreme heat. Finally, it calculated how that heat reduced regional income levels. The result is a company-specific estimate of economic harm due to intensified heat.

Chevron’s emissions are linked to $1.98 trillion in global income losses. ExxonMobil follows with $1.91 trillion, and BP with $1.45 trillion. State-owned Saudi Aramco is associated with $2.05 trillion in losses, while Gazprom accounts for about $2 trillion. The total damage from all companies studied is estimated at $28 trillion over three decades.

The largest losses occurred in tropical and lower-income areas—South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. These regions saw annual GDP per capita reductions exceeding 1%. In contrast, the US and Europe experienced lower relative impacts.

The legal implications

The study’s approach addresses a key legal hurdle: causation. By showing how each company’s emissions worsened heat and lowered incomes, it provides a framework that could be used in climate litigation. Several lawsuits in the United States and elsewhere have cited extreme heat events and their economic consequences as grounds for legal claims against fossil fuel producers. The study provides a reproducible scientific method that can be used to evaluate liability at both corporate and regional levels.

“Our framework can provide robust emissions-based attributions of climate damages at the corporate scale. This should help courts better evaluate liability claims for the losses and disruptions resulting from human-caused climate change,” said Justin Mankin, the study’s senior author and associate professor of geography at Dartmouth.

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