Under-reporting of greenhouse gas emissions in U.S. cities

Gurney, K., J. Liang, G. Roest, Y. Song, K. Mueller, and T. Lauvaux (2021), Under-reporting of greenhouse gas emissions in U.S. cities, Nature, doi:10.1038/s41467-020-20871-0.
Abstract

Cities dominate greenhouse gas emissions. Many have generated self-reported emission inventories, but their value to emissions mitigation depends on their accuracy, which remains untested. Here, we compare self-reported inventories from 48 US cities to independent estimates from the Vulcan carbon dioxide emissions data product, which is consistent with atmospheric measurements. We found that cities under-report their own greenhouse gas emissions, on average, by 18.3% (range: −145.5% to +63.5%) – a difference which if extrapolated to all U.S. cities, exceeds California’s total emissions by 23.5%. Differences arise because city inventories omit particular fuels and source types and estimate transportation emissions differently. These results raise concerns about self-reported inventories in planning or assessing emissions, and warrant consideration of the new urban greenhouse gas infor- mation system recently developed by the scientific community.

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Research Program
Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Program (CCEP)
Funding Sources
NASA Grant NNX14AJ20G
National Institute of Standards and Technology Grant 70NANB16H264N.
T. Lauvaux was supported by the French research program Make Our Planet Great Again (project CIUDAD).

 

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