全球智库信息集成服务系统

Introduction

Cities are the global centers of communication, commerce and culture. They are also a significant, and growing, source of energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A city’s ability to take effective action on mitigating climate change, and monitor progress, depends on having access to good quality data on GHG emissions. Planning for climate action begins with developing a GHG inventory. An inventory enables cities to understand the emissions contribution of different activities in the community.

Inventory methods that cities have used to date vary significantly. This inconsistency makes comparisons between cities difficult, raises questions around data quality, and limits the ability to aggregate local, subnational, and national government GHG emissions data. To allow for more credible and meaningful reporting, greater consistency in GHG accounting is required. The Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) responds to this challenge and offers a robust and clear framework that builds on existing methodologies for calculating and reporting city-wide GHG emissions. The GPC requires cities to measure and disclose a comprehensive inventory of GHG emissions and to total these emissions using two distinct but complementary approaches. One captures emissions from both production and consumption activities taking place within the city boundary, including some emissions released outside the city boundary. The other categorizes all emissions into “scopes,” depending on where they physically occur. Separate accounting of emissions physically released within the city boundary should be used for aggregation of multiple city inventories in order to avoid double counting.

Read the full executive summary (PDF).