Do we like them?

Do we like Caterpillar?

Makes construction and mining machinery, diesel engines and turbines; based in Texas, US.

Our score: 5 out of 10. A heavy-industry giant with a mixed record. It has real emissions targets, but it also has repeated environmental fines, and its machines are tied to fossil fuels and mining.

Caterpillar is the big yellow-machinery maker. It builds bulldozers, mining trucks and engines. My searches turned up mostly its own filings and older enforcement cases rather than fresh 2026 news, so this picture leans on past records.

The biggest emissions case was with the US Justice Department and EPA. Cat was accused of shipping more than 590,000 engines without the right emissions controls. It agreed to a consent decree with a $2.55 million civil penalty, and California's Air Resources Board separately got $510,000.

There were smaller cases too. Its 2006 annual report records a $300,000 penalty over an air permit in Kansas and a small fine for a UK waste handling breach. It also shows an earlier $25 million emissions penalty, expensed in 1998.

On the plus side, Cat has set 2030 sustainability goals, including a 30% cut in operational greenhouse gas emissions from 2018 levels. Its 2025 report says it has reached 34%. That's the company's own report, so it's worth a pinch of salt.

So we'd give it a middle score. There are no huge recent scandals in what we found, but the fines show a pattern, and the products still run on diesel and serve mining. We couldn't check recent pay, worker or political-donation records.