Local Government Lessons on Emissions Inventories

More and more local governments, state governments, and corporations

now report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Soon, federal

agencies will be required to inventory the annual emissions

from their buildings, fleets, and other sources.A daunting challenge for any

public manager, the process of conducting an emissions inventory can be

lengthy and complex. In hindsight, few inventory veterans could have guessed

that their effort would require studying the minutiae of, say, how to track fugitive

hydrofluorocarbon emissions from refrigerant systems.

Todays federal administrators have an enormous advantage: they can draw

on the expertise of local governments,which have a decade of experience trailblazing

the methods, measures, and reporting protocols to complete GHG inventories

for both government operations and communities at large.This progress

has been spearheaded by ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA, a

member association of 500 U.S. local governments.Founded in 1990 as the International

Council for Local Environmental Initiatives,this organization is committed

to climate protection and sustainability goals. (ICLEI Global, the parent

organization, boasts an additional 500 members worldwide.)

ICLEI has driven a movement on local climate action, and the key to success

has been our leadership and guidance with greenhouse gas emissions in

ventories, saysMichelleWyman, ICLEI USAs executive

director.Over the past decade, individual cities, towns,

and counties have turned to ICLEI for support, software

tools, technical expertise, and,most recently,our Local Government

Operations Protocol, the new reporting standard

that is completely scalable for any size and level of government.

Together, adds Wyman, ICLEI and its

members have faced just about every challenge, question,

and misstep possible in the inventory process.

An executive order or regulation that mandates GHG

reporting for each federal agency is highly likely in 2009.

Now is the time for public managers to begin their preparations,

drawing on key lessons that apply at the federal

level from ICLEI and its network of local governments.

Indispensable Inventories

At first take, an emissions inventory may seem like

nothing more than a bureaucratic burden, but it lays the

groundwork for inspiring action.A 2005 survey of ICLEI

members around the world, for example, found that their

climate protection measures helped them collectively reduce

GHG emissions by 23 million tons and saved them

$535 million annually.

None of these successes could have been possible had

these local governments not started with an emissions inventory.

ICLEIs mantra since the beginning has been,You

Must Quantify, or, as New York City Mayor Michael

Bloomberg, among others, puts it,If you cant measure

it,you cant manage it.You cant know whether your climate

protection efforts have been successful unless you first

measure your emissions (through a baseline inventory) and

track your progress accurately and consistently.

The lesson is the same for federal managers: before

you begin installing compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) light

bulbs in your facilities or switching to biofuels in your fleets,

you must calculate your starting point.Then, down the

line, youll be able to state definitively that your building

retrofit program saved $50,000 per year and reduced your

carbon dioxide emissions by 400 tons.

Questions and Guidance

The average local government inventory takes 400

hours (or 10 weeks), including the planning and strategizing

that typically precede data collection.Careful planning

is key.At the outset, nearly every local government

seeks the same reassurance:Will we be doing this inventory

theright way?Will we be following the same methods

and standards used by other local governments?

ICLEI has always strived to guide this consistency,but

back in the mid-1990swhen only a handful of proactive

local governments were even interested in emissions

inventoriesits standards were far less defined and its requirements

far less strict than they are today. ICLEI developed

many of the key components of any inventory

from scratch, including large sets of emission factors

(Table 1)numerical values describing the emission rate

of a given GHG from a given source.Many of these methods

and data sets evolved through trial and error.

Although the process may have been less clear for local

governments during that period, an intern or employee

working on an inventory could always pick up the phone

and call an ICLEI staffer with questions. Even today, getting

stuck and needing help is a normal part of the inventory

process. Federal agencies will need to know which oversight

organization they can call for consistent guidance.

National Reporting Standard

Over the past five years, local government inventory

guidelines have become far more sophisticated. In 2003,

ICLEI released its Clean Air and Climate Protection

(CACP) software,which has become the de facto tool for

local governments to enter their data, calculate the emissions

from each source, and complete an inventory in a

standardized fashion. Even CACP wasnt enough. Since

September 2007, ICLEI USAs membership has grown

by more than 35 percent.With so many member cities

from Chicago, Illinois, and Houston,Texas, to Roanoke,

Virginiaconducting inventories, the need for a national

standard was more urgent than ever.Only a national protocol

could help settle the endless debates about the gases

to be included in a local jurisdictions inventory (nitrous

oxide? sulfur hexafluoride?), the emissions sources

reported (airports? municipal landfills? pass-through

highways?), and the standard emission factors employed

for calculations.

In September 2008, ICLEI USA formally released

Version 1 of its Local Government Operations Protocol,

in partnership withThe Climate Registry,CaliforniaAir

Resources Board, and California ClimateAction Registry.

The protocol drew from existing GHG programs, including

theWorld Resources Institutes Greenhouse Gas

Protocol, the Environmental ProtectionAgency Climate

Leaders Greenhouse Gas Inventory Guidance, and The

Climate Registrys General Reporting Protocol.

ICLEIs protocol gives local governments the assurance

that they are following a thoroughly reviewed and

nationally accepted standard.This is the first and only protocol

designed specifically for a governments own internal

operations, and it is scalable from the local and state levels

to the federal level. ICLEI is also developing the Local

Community Protocols, a tool for local government to

help them baseline measure and track emissions from their

communities as a whole.

To avoid confusion,federal agencies will absolutely need

a vetted and approved protocol in placewhether ICLEIs

or anotherbefore they begin their inventories.Whatever

protocol federal agencies choose, it should parallel the

overarching principles stated in ICLEIs protocol: relevance,

completeness, consistency, transparency, and accuracy.

Appropriate Expectations

With all local governments adhering to the same reporting

and accounting methods, its tempting to believe

that cities carbon footprints can now be compared with

one another.

Thats not the point of greenhouse gas inventories,

saysAlex Ramel,energy and policy manager for Sustainable

Connections in Bellingham,Washington (and a former

ICLEI senior program officer as well as the former consultant

who helped produce NewYork Citys inventory).

In short, he says, inventories are too complex for city-tocity

comparisons. Even if two cities have similar populations,

for example, one could own its own municipal

utility or landfill, greatly increasing the emissions it is required

to report. In the same way, comparing federal agencies

emissions to one another would be misleading and

pointless.The only comparison for a government entity

is with itself over time, to track its goals,explains Ramel.

For ICLEI members, an emissions inventory is always

tied to climate action planning.When local governments

join ICLEI, they commit to undertake its five milestones

for climate protection:

1. Conduct a baseline emissions inventory and forecast.

2. Adopt an emissions reduction target.

3. Develop a local climate action plan.

4. Implement policies and measure.

5. Monitor and verify results (with a follow-up

inventory).

A thorough inventory, for example,helped NewYork

City tailor its PlaNYC,now considered the gold standard

of large-city climate and sustainability plans.The inventory

of fiscal years 1995,2001, and 2006 government emissions

and 1995,2000, and 2005 citywide emissions helped

city planners identify trends and target the largest sources

of GHGs.Accurate forecasting (from high-quality data)

enabled NewYork City to set an aggressive goal: to cut

citywide carbon emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels

by 2030 and reduce city governments carbon emissions

by 30 percent below fiscal year 2006 levels by 2017.

Tailoring an Inventory

The results of an inventory shape an action plan, but

the reverse is also true: specific goals and needs also de

termine the scope of the inventory.Before beginning an

inventory, a public manager should understand the end

goals. Questions to ask include the following:What are

these data going to be used for? Over time, do we want

to track energy consumption for each building individually

or track it by department?

New York Citys inventory planners understand

firsthand the value of these questions.The city has more

than fifty mayoral agencies, and planners initially reported

agency-specific inventories for only the ten largest energy

consumers.The other agencies were grouped together

under an other heading, but afterward, when smaller

agencies wanted to know their contribution,planners didnt

have that information readily available. If they had

known there would be this interest, they might have reported

the data differently.The lesson is that its important

to anticipate these issues and ask the higher-level entity

that is advancing the inventory the right questions.

Many local governments opt to aggregate their data

for buildings,but may separate out key facilities whose performance

they wish to track individually, such as large energy

consumers like hospitals or facilities slated to receive

photovoltaic systems.

Other local governments may choose to include optional

categories in their inventory, such as emissions from

employee commutes,waste generation, and other areas targeted

in their action plan.By measuring employee commute

emissions, they can track the efficacy of carpooling

and car-sharing programs or free-bus-pass programs. By

measuring waste generation, they can track the success of

a recycling program.Aggressive action plans may even call

for measuring emissions from employee business travel or

the embodied energy in products consumed (for example,

the emissions generated from manufacturing office

supplies).

Overall, pragmatism is the rule in designing inventories

at any level.The goals determine the detail of your

inventory, as do your budget and staffing constraints.

Making Lists

The process of inventory data collection consumes

the most time by far and can cause the most frustration.

ICLEIs protocol specifies all the direct and indirect sources

of emissions that local governments must report to comply

with the protocol,but simply knowing that they must

report vehicle fleet emissions is the tip of the iceberg.A

careful list must include all vehicles, and on the first pass,

city managers commonly include everything from passenger

cars to dump trucks, but forget about police helicopters

or the vehicles of city contractors.

The next step for a staffer is to locate and list the keepers

of all the records theyll need to collect, from building

utility bills to fuel-consumption logs.Completing an

accurate list can be tricky.The police department may

maintain its vehicle fleet separately from the general fleet

and purchase its fuel from a different source, which will

require contacting two separate fleet managers.

A full list of contacts makes clear that an emissions

inventory isnt an environmental initiative. Its an operational

one that requires the participation of all local government

departments,despite their compartmentalized bureaucracy

and independent accounting procedures,not to

mention occasional unwillingness to help.A directive from

a strong mayor or executive body is essential.

Countless local government managers have found that

a kickoff meeting increases their chances of success.To get

buy-in, it helps to call managers and staff together and explain

to them what the inventory is,why youre doing it,

and what youre going to need from them. If people dont

understand why the inventory is taking place, theyre less

likely to go the extramile to supply data at the level of specificity

you need.Another tip at this stage: create standardized

data-collection forms to be e-mailed to all participants.

Data Detective Work

A close inspection of records from a dozen different

departments will often reveal poor or inconsistent

record-keeping processes.Accounting systems may vary,

or may have changed within a department several years

back. Old databases are no longer available. Major expenditures

are tracked by one department and not another.

Other information is completely unavailable and must be

estimated, or data deemed accurate and based on billing

records turn out to be an estimate.Also,fiscal-year records

need to be converted to calendar-year entries, the standard

format for all GHG protocols.

Again,NewYork City offers a great case study.While

completing its inventory update,planners realized that they

didnt have accurate, centralized data for the consumption

of liquid fuels like gasoline,diesel,or heating oil.Their initial

inventory had relied on consumption estimates prepared

for budgeting purposes. After additional audits of

these data, planners realized there were some gaps and inconsistencies

in these centralized records.To correct this,

they sent out detailed surveys to each agency, asking for

the information from the past fiscal year.

After Data Collection

When the odyssey of data collection is over and every

record is entered into the inventory software, line by line,

a local governments intern or staff person can finally take

a deep breath.The software calculates the numbers,which

can then be divided,distributed, formatted, and categorized

into charts and graphs.You have an emissions inventory.

At the end of this process you have pie charts that

show the sources of emissions for all government operations,

or for a given department, and these visuals prove

to be extraordinarily valuable, says Ramel.He continues:

Ive witnessed department heads view the pie charts,

and in that moment they get it.They realize the impact

their individual department is having on the climate

[through its emissions].And the pie-chart visual gets them

thinking about all the ways they can cut electricity consumption

by turning off computers and lights and doing

all the small things that, if everyone does them, add up to

significant impacts.

Figures 1, 2, and 3 show pie charts from NewYork

Citys inventory.