US cities may be under-reporting their emissions… by up to 145%
Methods vary
Cities typically estimate their GHG emissions using tools such as theUS Community Protocol for Accounting and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions,developed by ICLEI; theGlobal Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventories (GPC), developed by the World Resources Institute, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and ICLEI; and theGlobal Covenant of Mayors Common Reporting Framework.
The process remains complex, though, and methodologies still differ. The report highlights key areas of variance such as accounting for shipping and airborne emissions and on-road emissions, for instance.
Further, cities may miss or exclude certain categories due to data challenges or resource constraints.
The Vulcan tool, which Gurney and a team of science and climate specialists, have developed over 15 years offers a standardized system for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions. It was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and quantifies and visualizes greenhouse gases emitted across the entire country down to individual power plants, neighborhoods, and roadways.
In an interview withCities Today, Gurney described it as “a big data mining machine”. It uses around 30 different datasets related to CO2 emissions, including federal databases, regulatory data, Highway Administration data, energy statistics, and fuel consumption figures, as well as information on land parcels, buildings, traffic, and demographics.
“It really is a giant mixture of different datasets that we bring together, and then we try to place the emissions as best we can in space and time across the whole landscape,” Gurney said.
The results from Vulcan are compared to atmospheric measurements to confirm accuracy.
Next steps
Gurney says the system can also help cities better prioritize and target their climate actions down to the specific pieces of roadway or buildings that are creating the most emissions. In one city, for instance, the tool shows that around 10% of the physical road surface accounts for 60%of on-road CO2 emissions. With this insight, cities could achieve results faster and at a lower cost.
Gurney is pushing for federal agencies in the US and global organizations more widely to consider adopting Vulcan as a systematic way to track emissions.
He uses the analogy of the weather: “In the same way that we wouldn’t expect every city or state to collect weather data, run a weather model and figure out their own weather, it doesn’t seem very efficient to have every single city engaging in this redundant activity, which is costly, tedious and very time-consuming. We have a centralized system that we’ve built much like a weather forecast system, and we can make this foundational data available to everybody.”
Laura Jay, C40’s Regional Director for North America, toldCities Today: “The report underscores how critical cities are to addressing the climate crisis. It also makes an important case for a strong partnership between the federal government, states, and cities with a focus on which specific emissions each level of government can most effectively address, as well as cities working closely with the business community to bring down emissions from all sectors.
“We welcome any new insights that can improve our efforts to reduce emissions, particularly those within cities’ direct control.”
The next steps for Gurney and his team are looking at ‘scope 3 emissions’ in the value chain, as well as globalizing the research using remote sensing.
Cities Todayhas contacted the cities of Cleveland and Palo Alto for comment.
Update (Feb 11):ICLEI published aresponseto the paper inNature Communications, including a Technical FAQ. It states: “The GHG accounting method in the study is atypical in local GHG accounting, it is not fully comparable with city inventories, and does not address some of the key policy levers that drive cities to conduct GHG inventories and develop GHG mitigation strategies.”
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Story byCities Today
Cities Today is the leading news platform on urban mobility and innovation, reaching an international audience of city leaders.Cities Today is the leading news platform on urban mobility and innovation, reaching an international audience of city leaders.
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