Carbon Majors: Quantifying Corporate Climate Liability

Litigation and legislative efforts to seek compensation from corporations for their climate impacts are accelerating as emissions rise and extreme weather events become more frequent and intense. Advances in climate attribution science increasingly allow researchers to link specific climate impacts to historical corporate emissions.

The National Bureau of Economic Research recently estimated that 1°C of global warming reduces world GDP by over 20% in the long run, while one study estimated climate-related damages exceeded $2 trillion between 2014 and 2023. Using the Carbon Majors database, Climate Analytics calculated that the 25 largest oil and gas producers are responsible for roughly $20 trillion of climate damages between 1985 and 2018.

As attribution science matures, financial accountability for climate impacts is increasingly emerging as a material risk for fossil fuel producers. This evolution is taking place through legislative, legal, and regulatory channels, with the Carbon Majors database serving as a foundational tool for quantifying responsibility and informing financial recovery claims. Below, InfluenceMap identifies and analyzes emerging mechanisms for financial accountability targeting fossil fuel producers globally.

Legislation

Governments are beginning to embed climate liability into law. In the United States, several states are advancing Climate Superfund legislation designed to recover damages from fossil fuel companies. Vermont passed the first such law in 2024, and New York followed soon after with legislation requiring $75 billion in payments over 25 years. While a federal court blocked the New York law in August 2026, the ruling rests on preemption, a contested legal precedent and one of the core arguments advanced by corporate opponents of Superfund bills. New York may yet appeal the decision, leaving the companies exposed to continued legal volatility. More than a dozen other states are considering similar Climate Superfund bills. In large economies such as California, where cumulative climate damages already reach into the hundreds of billions, proposed legislation could scale accordingly.

In the Philippines, policymakers proposed the CLIMA Act, which would establish a climate change reparations fund financed by corporate contributors and use attribution science to determine liability. For policymakers, these frameworks offer a tool to fund adaptation and recovery without further burdening taxpayers. But for fossil fuel companies and their investors, they may signify the emergence of systemic, policy-driven costs that could spread across jurisdictions.

Litigation

Climate litigation is increasingly moving beyond challenges to government policy toward claims seeking to hold companies responsible for the consequences of their emissions. According to the Grantham Institute’s Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation: 2025 Snapshot, at least 226 new climate cases were filed in 2024, 20% of which targeted corporations. Notably, cases against corporate defendants appear to have a comparatively higher success rate. Underscoring the growing viability of corporate climate litigation as a strategy, Zero Carbon Analytics found that, by the end of 2024, compensation for climate damages accounted for 38% of the climate lawsuits it identified against fossil fuel companies.

In 2025, a German court set a significant precedent for this area of litigation in Lliuya v. RWE AG, in which Peruvian farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya sued German energy company RWE for its contribution to climate change and the risks posed to his community from melting glaciers. While the court dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the risk to Lliuya’s property was not sufficiently imminent, its decision recognized that companies could, in principle, be held liable for climate-related harm. Drawing on the Carbon Majors database to trace emissions to RWE, the case demonstrated how attribution science can help establish corporate responsibility, even though Lliuya ultimately failed to obtain compensation.

New cases are now testing the limits of this emerging liability framework. In 2025, Pakistani farmers affected by the catastrophic 2022 floods filed a suit in Germany against RWE AG and Heidelberg Materials, seeking approximately €1 million in partial compensation. The case seeks to establish liability for specific, quantifiable losses and could therefore test whether the proportional-responsibility arguments raised in Lliuya can be translated into an award of monetary damages. Similarly, Filipino survivors of Super Typhoon Odette filed a lawsuit against Shell in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales in December 2025. The claim seeks to link Shell’s contribution to global climate change to the damage suffered by communities affected by the typhoon. Its use of Philippine law in proceedings before a UK court represents a further development in the geographical reach of corporate climate litigation, bringing together claimants and harms in the Global South with a corporate defendant sued in its home jurisdiction in the Global North.

In the United States, cities, states, and community groups are seeking compensation for past damages and future adaptation costs. Examples include the consolidated California climate lawsuits, as well as cases brought by municipalities including Hoboken, Chicago, and San Juan, and state-level claims including those brought by New Jersey and Rhode Island. Many of these cases have been ongoing for years without reaching trial, as courts grapple with procedural and jurisdictional issues. As a result, there have so far been few substantive rulings on corporate liability or damages. Nevertheless, the US remains the most significant jurisdiction globally for active corporate climate litigation.

As of 2026, no court has awarded large-scale damages against a major fossil fuel company, but as courts establish precedents by accepting the legal arguments and scientific evidence underpinning these claims, a successful case appears increasingly likely.

Future Accountability Mechanisms

Emerging efforts to pass rising insurance costs back to fossil fuel companies offer a glimpse of how climate liability could evolve. Legislative proposals in California, and New York, alongside a similar proposal in Hawaii that did not advance in 2026, have explored mechanisms for recovering costs associated with rising insurance premiums and disaster payouts, which in some cases could allow insurers to pursue claims following climate-driven losses. Though still in early stages, these proposals illustrate how disaster losses could become recurring, systematized claims, effectively embedding climate damages into the cost structure of the fossil fuel industry. As attribution science advances, additional emerging mechanisms will likely expand liability.

Precedent

The history of mass liability shows that once a clear legal precedent is established, claims can expand rapidly. Courts have already accepted key elements: that emissions can be attributed to specific companies, that these emissions contribute to measurable harms, and that such harms may be legally recoverable. Supporting the legal basis for accountability, the International Court of Justice’s 2025 advisory opinion affirmed that states have obligations to prevent climate harm, including by regulating private actors, and can be held responsible where they have failed to limit private actors’ emissions in their jurisdictions.

Taken together, these developments suggest that climate liability is shifting from a theoretical risk towards tangible legal and financial exposure. A successful damages award or legislative breakthrough could mark a point of no return, establishing a pathway for turning damages from emissions into recurring, quantifiable liabilities for fossil fuel producers.