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NARSTO Workshop on Innovative Methods for Emission Inventory Development and Evaluation University of Texas, Austin October 14-17, 2003 |
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Poster 18: State-of-the-Art Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventory Guidance and Tools
Anne Choate, Philip Groth, Randy Freed, Matt Stanberry
ICF Consulting
Andrea Denny
EPA State and Local Climate Change Program
This year, the U.S. EPA State and Local Climate Change Program (SLCCP) is unveiling revised guidance to states on conducting greenhouse gas emission inventories. For the first time since EPA began providing guidance to states on estimating greenhouse gas emissions in 1992, the guidance will be accompanied by and a suite of user-friendly inventory complementary spreadsheet tools.
The revised inventory guidance, Volume VIII of the EIIP series, reflects the latest information on data sources, as well as emission factors and methods that are reflects the latest methodologies, emission factors, and data sources available to assist states in estimating their greenhouse gas emissions. consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines and the Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks. Understanding The correspondinng tools are designed to help states overcome the key hurdles to developing state greenhouse gas emission inventories and updating existing inventories, namely the difficulty states face in obtaining data availability and the time and effort needed necessary to set design a framework for up the infrastructure to calculating emissions, EPA developed a series of spreadsheet tools that will reduce the burden associated with developing a new inventory or updating an existing inventory. Both the guidance and the tools cover the full range of greenhouse gases and sources covered in the national inventory, including carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion, industrial processes, land-use change and forestry, agricultural liming, and incineration; methane emissions from stationary combustion, mobile combustion, coal mining, oil systems, natural gas systems, manure management, enteric fermentation, rice cultivation, agricultural residue burning, landfills, and wastewater treatment; nitrous oxide emissions from stationary combustion, mobile combustion, nitric acid production, adipic acid production, manure management, agricultural soil management, agricultural residue burning, incineration, and wastewater treatment; and high-Global Warming Potential gas emissions from industrial processes and substitutes for ozone-depleting substances. Where possible, EPA has provided the tools provide default activity data and emission factors at the state level for the full time series from 1990 through 2000. EPA plans to update the tools periodically to incorporate significant changes to the methodologies and to update default activity data. Although it is unlikely that EPA will be able to update the guidance and underlying data sets each year, EPA plans to update the tools periodically to incorporate significant changes to the methodologies. Both the guidance and the tools cover the full range of greenhouse gases and sources covered in the national inventory. The SLCCP is in the process of designing a supplemental tool that will enable states to project emissions from greenhouse gas sources to the year 2020. States and localities armed with the updated guidance, the emission estimation tools and ultimately, the projection tool, will be better prepared to assess emissions and to create effective strategies to reduce emissions in the future.