Linking Emissions from Fossil Fuel Megaprojects to Lifetime Climate Impacts Across Generations: a Framework for Climate Litigation

The Permian Delaware Tight, located in Texas (USA), is the largest identified carbon bomb worldwide. Carbon bombs are defined as 425 fossil fuel megaprojects, of which nearly 60% are already in operation. With potential emissions of 27.8 GtCO₂, the Permian Delaware Tight alone would release three-quarters of current annual global CO₂ emissions and consume over ten percent of the remaining global carbon budget compatible with limiting warming to 1.5 °C. Overall, the cumulative potential emissions from all identified carbon bombs exceed at least twice the remaining carbon budget consistent with the Paris Agreement.

However, quantifying the specific climate impacts attributable to individual fossil fuel projects remains a major scientific and legal challenge. Such attribution is central not only for understanding the long-term consequences of continued fossil fuel expansion, but also for informing emerging forms of climate litigation in which plaintiffs seek to establish causal links between emissions, harms, and responsibility. 

Within the Source2Suffering project, we develop a modelling framework that converts CO₂ and CH₄ emissions from any fossil fuel project into lifetime exposure to six categories of high-impact climate extremes, including heatwaves, droughts, and floods. In addition, the framework quantifies each project's contribution to committed glacier mass loss and multi-century sea-level rise. By explicitly incorporating uncertainty, the model provides probabilistic impact estimates that can support evidence-based arguments in legal contexts where causal strength, foreseeability, and proportionality are scrutinised.

Crucially, the framework reveals how the impacts of individual projects propagate unequally across generations and countries. This integrated approach provides new quantitative tools for bridging geosciences and legal practice by making project-level climate responsibility scientifically traceable, comparable, and communicable within litigation and regulatory processes.