Top 50 corporate GHG emitters in the U.S.

How this ranking is built

This list ranks U.S. companies by cumulative greenhouse gas emissions reported to the EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) since 2011. We aggregate facility-level filings to the parent-company level using the GHGRP's "Parent Company" linkage, so a utility holding company operating dozens of power plants appears once on this ranking, with the sum of all its plants' reported emissions across every year of available data.

The 25,000 metric ton CO2-equivalent reporting threshold means that smaller emitters are excluded by design. Independent studies suggest GHGRP captures roughly 85–90% of U.S. industrial direct emissions, leaving a long tail of small reporters and non-covered sources (agriculture, on-road transportation, residential combustion) out of this ranking. Companies whose entire footprint falls below the threshold are absent. For a complete national inventory, the EPA's Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks fills in those gaps with statistical estimation.

What "top emitter" means here

Top emitter status reflects historical operational footprint, not current intensity or trajectory. A coal-heavy utility that retired most of its fleet between 2015 and 2023 may still appear high on this cumulative ranking because the early-2010s tonnage dominates the sum. To see which companies are reducing the fastest, see the biggest reducers ranking, which compares each company's earliest reported year against its most recent reported year for companies with continuous reporting.

Sector concentration is high in the top of this list. Electric utilities operating large fossil generation fleets typically occupy six or seven of the top ten slots, followed by integrated oil & gas majors and large refining companies. Cement producers and a small number of chemical companies round out the top 20. This concentration is structural: a handful of sectors run the largest combustion or process emissions in the U.S. industrial economy, and every company in those sectors that operates at material scale is captured by the GHGRP threshold.

Reading the columns

The Total CO2e column sums every reporting year for that company. The Facilities column counts the distinct GHGRP reporters under that parent company across all reporting years (so a facility that was sold mid-decade still contributes to both the seller's and buyer's counts). The States column counts how many U.S. states host at least one reporting facility for that company, a proxy for geographic footprint diversity. Industry is the company's primary EPA subpart classification; many companies operate across multiple subparts, in which case the company detail page shows the full mix.

Click any company name to see its full facility list, sector breakdown, year-over-year movement, and the underlying EPA FLIGHT records. Companies that have undergone mergers or rebranding may appear under their current legal entity name; the company page notes prior reporting names so longitudinal comparisons remain traceable. This ranking refreshes annually as new GHGRP reporting years are finalized, typically each October for the prior calendar year's emissions.