How much would fossil fuel companies need to pay for climate change damages?

Here’s a note from Andreas Rasche:

How much would fossil fuel companies need to pay when climate change damages were assigned to them based on their emissions? According to a study that was just published, the estimated damages of the combined CO2 emissions from 25 companies are around 20 trillion USD for the 1985-2018 time period (financial gains were around 50% higher during the same period). Here is the full report.

The study uses an established method – the social cost of carbon – to calculate the damages. It assumes ‘partial damage allocation’: an equal split of responsibility between producers, policymakers, and end users.

When discussing loss-and-damage funding (e.g., during COP28) we cannot just focus on governments. The burden must be equally shared. Antonio Guterres said last year “Polluters must pay” when suggesting to tax windfall profits of fossil fuel companies.