Guides & Explainers
Plain-language guides to understanding corporate greenhouse gas emissions data, regulations, and methodologies. The EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program covers roughly 8,000 large facilities that each emit over 25,000 metric tons of CO2e a year; see our methodology.
Guide catalog · purpose mix
How 7 published guides split by purpose
Exclusive catalog families, Reporting, Regulation, Analysis, matching the published guide files below. Not a restatement of facility CO₂e shares.
Registry shape · Scope 1 size bands
How 2,289 reporting parents split by latest Scope 1 total
Exclusive Scope 1 size bands across the EPA GHGRP parent registry these guides interpret, orthogonal to the catalog purpose mix above.
Understanding Corporate Carbon Reporting
How U.S. companies measure and disclose GHG emissions under EPA GHGRP and the GHG Protocol, including CO2e and Scope 1/2/3.
Scope 1, 2, and 3 Emissions Explained
Understand the difference between Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions and why PlainCarbon's EPA GHGRP data covers Scope 1 only.
Tracking Corporate Emission Trends Over Time
How to use multi-year EPA GHGRP data on PlainCarbon to analyze corporate emission trends and assess climate progress.
California SB 253 Explained: The Corporate Climate Disclosure Law
California SB 253 Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act: who is covered, Scope 1/2/3 rules, timelines, penalties, and SEC comparison.
How to Read a Company Emissions Profile
Interpret corporate GHG data: what the numbers mean, how to benchmark across industries, and which year-over-year trends actually matter.
How to Use Emissions Data for ESG Research
A guide to using EPA GHGRP emissions data from PlainCarbon for ESG analysis, investment research, and corporate sustainability evaluation.
The Biggest Corporate Emitters in America
Who are the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the US? Explore EPA GHGRP data showing which companies and sectors produce the most emissions.
Methodology
Our guides are based on publicly available data from authoritative government sources. All statistics, ratings, and figures cited in these guides are drawn directly from official datasets and publications, with sources clearly referenced throughout.
We aim to present complex government data in plain language that is accessible to general audiences. When methodologies differ between data sources or change over time, we note these variations inline. Our editorial process includes regular reviews to ensure accuracy and timeliness of the information presented.
Why PlainCarbon Publishes Guides
The data on this site is faithful to the public record, but public records are rarely self-explanatory. Codes, categorical fields, thresholds, and regulatory terminology can confuse even frequent researchers. PlainCarbon's guides translate those specifics into plain English so that a non-expert reader can interpret a record page correctly and a professional reader can quickly check the interpretation. Each guide names its sources and is checked against the underlying regulation, methodology, or historical context before publication.
What You Will Find Here
Every guide focuses on a single, researchable question, usually something a visitor might type into a search engine. We cite the original source wherever we state a specific regulatory threshold, dollar figure, date, or fact-about-the-world. We do not invent numbers, do not quote unreliable secondary sources, and do not paraphrase source material so aggressively that its meaning shifts. If you notice a factual drift or a sentence where our summary disagrees with the linked source, email the correction and we will update the guide.
Guides Are Not Professional Advice
Reading a guide is a good first step, it orients you to the vocabulary, the process, and the known edge cases. It is not a substitute for talking to a licensed professional. Guides here do not establish a professional relationship, do not constitute advice tailored to your circumstances, and do not account for recent changes that may not yet be reflected in the upstream dataset. Use them to understand what you are looking at and to form better questions to bring to a qualified advisor.
How We Decide What to Write
We pick guide topics by looking at real visitor questions, search queries that land on the site without a good destination, emails from readers asking for explainers, and patterns in the data that deserve a sustained write-up. We favor topics where a short, honest, well-cited guide genuinely helps over topics that merely drive traffic. When we get a topic wrong, we correct it and note the update; when we get feedback that a guide missed an angle, we add a section rather than rewriting from scratch.
Download the state aggregate CSV referenced in these guides: ghgrp-state-statistics.csv. Key findings live on statistics.
Every figure on PlainCarbon is rendered directly from EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on the EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. For the boundaries on using this data, read our privacy policy, terms of use, and appropriate-use disclaimer.