The world’s top fossil fuel companies owe at least $209bn in annual climate reparations, according to a report published in the journal One Earth and reported by The Guardian.

Twenty-one companies, including BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Total are among the largest companies included in the research.

It is the first time researchers have quantified the economic burden caused by individual companies that are extracting wealth from planet heating fossil fuels.  The study considers their finding to be a substantial yet conservative price tag, as the methodology excludes the economic value of lost lives and livelihoods, species extenciont and other biodiversity loss as well as other wellbeing components not captured in GDP.

Last year at the UN’s Cop27 summit it was agreed to establish a ‘loss and damage’ financing fund to compensate poor countries for the irreparable and unavoidable economic and non-economic costs of extreme weather events and slow-onset climate disasters such as sea level rise and melting glaciers.

Overall, global economic damages to be expected from the climate crisis are estimated at $99tn between 2025 and 2050 – of which fossil fuel emissions are responsible for $69.6tn.

Read the full Guardian report here.