How to Read a Company Emissions Profile

When you click on a company in PlainCarbon, you see a panel of numbers, total CO2e, facilities, year-over-year trends, gas breakdowns. What do these figures actually tell you? And what context do you need to interpret them correctly? This guide walks through each element of a company emissions profile.

1. Total CO2e: The Headline Number

The "Total CO2e" figure at the top of every company profile represents the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions across all reported years, typically 2011 through 2023. It's expressed in metric tons of CO2-equivalent (MT CO2e), where all gases are converted to their warming equivalent relative to CO2 using IPCC global warming potential factors.

Important context: This is cumulative, not annual. A company that has been reporting since 2011 has 13 years of data summed. A company that only started reporting in 2020 (perhaps because they previously fell below the 25,000 MT/year threshold) shows only 4 years. When comparing cumulative totals, always check when a company started reporting.

Also remember: this is EPA GHGRP Scope 1 data only. It captures what a company emits directly from facilities it owns or operates that exceed 25,000 MT/year. Purchased electricity (Scope 2), supply chain emissions (Scope 3), and smaller facilities are not included.

2. Annual Trend: Are Emissions Rising or Falling?

The year-by-year bar chart is often the most informative view. Trends tell you whether a company's emissions are on a credible reduction trajectory, or heading in the wrong direction.

Look for structural vs. cyclical changes. A large drop in a single year often reflects economic factors (recessions, shutdowns, COVID-19 in 2020) rather than structural decarbonization. The 2020 data for most industrial companies shows a sharp drop, but it rebounded in 2021. Sustained multi-year declines across multiple economic cycles signal real progress.

Acquisitions and divestitures distort trends. If a utility company sold its coal plants in 2018 and shows lower emissions from 2019 onward, that's not decarbonization, it's accounting. The coal plants still emit; they just have a different owner now. Scope-based emissions accounting standards allow this; absolute physical emissions don't disappear from the atmosphere.

New facilities entering the GHGRP threshold. If a company expands operations and new facilities cross the 25,000 MT reporting threshold, emissions will appear to jump even if nothing changed at existing facilities. Context is everything.

3. Facility Count and Geographic Spread

The facility count and state count give you a sense of how geographically distributed a company's emissions are. A company with 200 facilities in 45 states has a very different emissions profile structure than one with 3 facilities in 1 state.

Average emissions per facility (total ÷ facility count) tells you whether the company is a portfolio of many smaller emitters or dominated by a few mega-emitters. A utility with 50 power plants averaging 3 million MT each has very different reduction options than one with 500 plants averaging 300,000 MT each.

Looking at individual facilities (via the "Facilities" tab on a company profile) can reveal which specific assets drive the most emissions, and which states or regions carry the highest concentration of that company's footprint.

4. Gas Breakdown: CO2, CH4, N2O

Where available, PlainCarbon shows the breakdown of emissions by gas, CO2, methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). This is available at the facility level from EPA's 2023 single-year data.

A high methane share is worth flagging. Methane has a global warming potential of 80x CO2 over 20 years (or 28x over 100 years). Methane emissions are common in natural gas production, transmission, coal mining, and livestock operations. Unlike CO2, methane breaks down in the atmosphere faster (~12 years), meaning that reducing methane emissions has rapid near-term climate benefits, making it a priority target for climate policy.

High CO2 is typical of combustion-heavy industries - power generation, cement, steel. High N2O is typical of agricultural or chemical operations. Seeing a facility with high CO2e but mostly N2O points toward fertilizer or chemical manufacturing.

5. Industry Benchmarking

An absolute emissions number alone is hard to evaluate. Is 50 million MT CO2e a lot for a utility? What about for a grocery chain? Context requires industry comparison.

PlainCarbon provides an industry rank alongside the overall rank, so you can see where a company stands relative to its peers. The industry pages show the full distribution of companies within each sector.

Common benchmarking metrics by industry include:

• •Power generation: MT CO2e per MWh generated (carbon intensity of electricity)
• •Oil & gas: MT CO2e per barrel of oil equivalent produced
• •Chemicals/manufacturing: MT CO2e per unit of output or per dollar revenue
• •Transportation: MT CO2e per ton-mile or passenger-mile

GHGRP data alone doesn't include production output figures, so intensity metrics require supplementing with company financial data. Nonetheless, comparing a company to its industry peers on absolute emissions and facility count provides useful signal.

6. What GHGRP Data Cannot Tell You

Knowing the limits of the data is as important as knowing what it says:

7. Using PlainCarbon Effectively

Here's a recommended workflow for analyzing a company on PlainCarbon:

1. Start with the trend chart. Is the company's emissions direction improving over 13 years, flat, or worsening? Look for sustained direction, not single-year noise.
2. Check the industry rank. Is this company a large emitter relative to peers, or middle of the pack? Context matters enormously.
3. Drill into facilities. Which specific facilities drive the most emissions? Are these core operations or legacy assets that might be divested?
4. Look at gas mix. If methane is a large share, that's different from CO2, both in terms of near-term climate impact and the types of technical solutions available.
5. Use the comparison tool. Compare the company to a direct competitor to see relative performance within the same industry under similar conditions.
6. Cross-reference with PlainInfluence. Does this company's political lobbying activity align with its stated climate commitments? PlainInfluence tracks corporate political spending.