Climate TRACE aims to address the lack of consistent effective monitoring, reporting, and verification of countries’ annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and mitigation efforts by providing data that are available in real-time (or as near as real-time as practicable for a given sector) and which will be updated regularly. In addition to country governments, other non-state actors like state, regional and city governments, companies, and citizen groups have even more sporadic, incomplete and outdated data. Climate TRACE data showed that among the world’s top countries that submit regular inventories, emissions from oil and gas may collectively be around 1BN tons higher than official reports.

Climate TRACE has prioritised producing emissions data that is available in all countries, recent, and granular. In October 2022, Climate TRACE will launch the first-ever facility-level emission database which will pinpoint all the most polluting facilities (power plants, industries, mines and ships), giving policymakers clear objectives to reduce emissions. This will include emissions from previously undetected sources such as landfills and livestock farms. Climate Trace has also launched a pilot project to provide emissions data to six subnational governments.