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II. What is a Greenhouse Gas Inventory?
The Basics
An emissions and
removals inventory is an accounting of the amount of air pollutants emitted
to and removed from a community’s, state’s, nation’s, or
the Earth’s atmosphere in amounts per some unit of time (e.g., day or
year) by type of source and sink. An inventory is generally characterized
by these factors:
- The chemical or physical
identity of the pollutants included
- The geographic area covered
- The institutional entities
covered
- The time period over which
emissions and removals are estimated
- The types of activities that
cause emissions and removals
Emission inventories are
developed for a variety of purposes. Inventories of natural and
anthropogenic emissions are used by scientists as inputs to air quality
models, by policy makers to develop strategies and policies or track
progress of standards, and by facilities and regulatory agencies to
establish compliance records with allowable emission rates.
A well-constructed
inventory should include enough documentation and other data to allow
readers to understand the underlying assumptions and to reconstruct the
calculations for each of the estimates included (i.e., it should enable and
promote transparency).
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