U.S. Cities Are Vastly Undercounting Emissions, Researchers Find
Inconsistent and flawed data is undercutting efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from American cities, according to a new study.
San Francisco at dusk. Nearly three-quarters of the carbon dioxide generated from fossil fuels in the United States comes from cities.Credit.Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times
Feb. 2, 2021
When cities try to figure out the amount of greenhouse gases they emit, they tend to undercount and not just by a little.
The average error is nearly 20 percent, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers suggested that if that error was consistent across all American cities, the resulting annual missed emissions would be nearly one-quarter higher than those of the entire state of California.