Who’s Driving Climate Change? New Data Catalogs 72,000 Polluters and Counting

Upstream from Shanghai along the Yangtze River, a sprawling factory complex in eastern China is churning out tens of millions of tons of steel a year — and immense quantities of planet-warming gases.

The plant’s owner has not disclosed how much the site emits. Now, though, researchers say that by peering down from space, they have found that the factory’s emissions are likely higher than those of any other steel plant on Earth.

Here’s how they did it.

Their estimates are part a new global compendium of emissions released on Wednesday by Climate TRACE, a nonprofit coalition of environmental groups, technology companies and academic scientists. By using software to scour data from satellites and other sources, Climate TRACE says it can project emissions not just for whole countries and industries, but for individual polluting facilities. It catalogs steel and cement factories, power plants, oil and gas fields, cargo ships, cattle feedlots — 72,612 emitters and counting, a hyperlocal atlas of the human activities that are altering the planet’s chemistry.

Scientists have been measuring atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases for decades. They know how much average levels are rising worldwide, and they know that burning of fossil fuels is the main driver. It’s when they try to apportion the blame more precisely — How much are specific industries and companies emitting? In which countries? — that things get complicated.