Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission inventories for cities and city regions are confounded by the small spatial scale of cities and by trans-boundary infrastructures, travel, and trade-of-goods and services between cities. This study will compare three GHG emission methods in 45 U.S. counties side-by-side, to evaluate:
• Implementability – How does data availability facilitate method implementation in each county.
• Policy Relevance – How can the GHG inventory findings be used for policy relevant decisions.
• Inter-City Comparability – What are the best available metrics for comparing GHG emissions across cities.
The three different methods are:
• Traditional geographic based methods measure GHG emissions occurring from end-uses of electricity and fossil fuels from buildings and surface transport, community-wide, and are similar to production based inventories.
• A geographic-plus (or hybrid) GHG inventory, builds upon WRI GHG protocols. The method includes most policy-relevant trans-boundary activities such as commuter & airline travel, and life-cycle based embodied energy of key materials such as transport-fuels, water, shelter, and food, used in all cities. Both the geographic and geographic-plus methods, consider the entire community together, including all residential-commercial-industrial activities.
• In contrast, consumption-based GHG inventories, measure GHG emissions resulting from economic final-demand, dominated by household consumption, all trans-boundary GHG’s, including international imports. Unlike geographic-plus, here the community is divided, with commercial-industrial activities for exports not counted in local boundary.
The side-by-side comparison will help address the practical value-added of all three methods in helping cities measure and reduce GHG emissions.
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission inventories for cities and city regions are confounded by the small spatial scale of cities and by trans-boundary infrastructures, travel, and trade-of-goods and services between cities. This study will compare three GHG emission methods in 45 U.S. counties side-by-side, to evaluate:
• Implementability – How does data availability facilitate method implementation in each county.
• Policy Relevance – How can the GHG inventory findings be used for policy relevant decisions.
• Inter-City Comparability – What are the best available metrics for comparing GHG emissions across cities.
The three different methods are:
• Traditional geographic based methods measure GHG emissions occurring from end-uses of electricity and fossil fuels from buildings and surface transport, community-wide, and are similar to production based inventories.
• A geographic-plus (or hybrid) GHG inventory, builds upon WRI GHG protocols. The method includes most policy-relevant trans-boundary activities such as commuter & airline travel, and life-cycle based embodied energy of key materials such as transport-fuels, water, shelter, and food, used in all cities. Both the geographic and geographic-plus methods, consider the entire community together, including all residential-commercial-industrial activities.
• In contrast, consumption-based GHG inventories, measure GHG emissions resulting from economic final-demand, dominated by household consumption, all trans-boundary GHG’s, including international imports. Unlike geographic-plus, here the community is divided, with commercial-industrial activities for exports not counted in local boundary.
The side-by-side comparison will help address the practical value-added of all three methods in helping cities measure and reduce GHG emissions.
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Presented by IGERT.org.
Funded by the National Science Foundation.
Copyright 2023 TERC.
Presented by IGERT.org.
Funded by the National Science Foundation.
Copyright 2023 TERC.
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