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Note snapshot
The note focuses on measuring individual and country-level carbon footprints and their distribution. It provides an overview of the concepts and methods used in the literature. There are other important linkages between climate outcomes and inequality.
For example, we could focus on:
1. the inequality in who is affected by climate damages (Méjean et al. 2024)
2. the access to climate insurance (Bézy 2025)
3. the burden of climate policies (Ohlendorf et al. 2021), including who has the ability to adjust their behavior (Oswald et al. 2020)
4. the impact of climate change on economic inequality and the distribution of wealth (Chancel et al. 2025c).
The note is not meant to be a comprehensive manual or literature review. It tries to highlight interesting and relevant developments and concepts in the area that could be of interest for researchers starting to work on similar topics.
Measuring individual ownership-based footprints: main findings
Inequality in ownership-based carbon footprints is often an order of magnitude higher than in consumption-based footprints (Chancel and Rehm 2025). For example, at the global level, the share of the wealthiest 10% in private ownership-based emissions, i.e., excluding government ownership emissions, stood at 77% in 2022 (Chancel and Rehm 2026) while their share in consumption-based emissions is around 47% (Bruckner et al. 2022).
On the other hand, the bottom 50% is only responsible for 3% of private ownership-based emissions globally in 2022. The 77% share is higher than the top 10% group’s share in net wealth, meaning that the inequality in ownership-based emissions exceeds the inequality in wealth (Figure 14). This is because the group tends to own assets that are, on average, more carbon-intensive than the assets owned in the middle and bottom of the wealth distribution.
Including government ownership (e.g., the emissions from power plants in state-owned companies), the top 10% share in ownership-based footprints still stands at around 60%. At the country level, studies show that, compared to direct household emissions (i.e., emissions from driving a car, heating your home), the emissions linked to firm ownership completely dominate the carbon footprint of the wealthiest groups (Chancel and Rehm 2025).
Studies based on micro-data can then verify whether the carbon intensity of the assets owned changes within asset classes, i.e., do richer households own more carbon-intensive firms (within a sector) than other groups (Rehm et al. 2026).
Simple calculations suggest that a tax levied on ownership-based emissions could be more progressive than a tax on consumption-based emissions (Figure 15; Chancel and Rehm 2025).
Authors
Yannic Rehm