Nature Environment and Pollution Technology

Yukuo Yang ¹, Liu Xing ¹, Tao Ye ²

Affiliations
1 School of Economics and Business Administration, Chongqing University, Chongqing, CN
2 University of Edinburgh Business School, England, GB

Abstract

Cities present a challenge together with an opportunity for climate change. The Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC), which was announced in December 2014 in Lima, offers cities a robust, transparent and globally-accepted framework to consistently identify, calculate and report on city-level GHG emissions. This study focused on the emerging GPC approach and applied it to establish the GHG emission inventory for Xiamen, which is a rapid developing coastal city in China. Based on the GPC approach and the gathered data, the total GHG emissions in the inventory boundary has reached to 19.85 million tonnes CO₂e in the inventory year 2007. GHG emissions discharged from stationary sources are 14.37 million tonnes of CO₂e and account for 72.37% of the total GHG emission in Xiamen. And the per capita emissions come to 8.17 tonnes CO₂e, higher than the average 5.3 tonnes CO₂e for China in the same year reported by The World Bank in 2015. The GPC, in general, is clear and practical, and provides a more comprehensive scope when calculating the GHG emissions. However, the main challenge for applying the GPC is the data availability. It is recommended for the government statistical offices and the public agencies to increase the additional input that is specifically used for improving the data required for GHG emission inventories. Future studies should try to use more local activity data and emission factors, so that the evaluation could be more objective and accurate.

Keywords

Emission Inventory, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Global Protocol, Xiame.

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