This article was originally published by Sarah Wray on Cities Today, the leading news platform on urban mobility and innovation, reaching an international audience of city leaders. For the latest updates follow Cities Today on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, or sign up for Cities Today News. A new study finds that US cities could […]
Just a little bit off
David Kordalski
U.S. cities are significantly undercounting greenhouse gas emissions, a new study finds, and Cleveland is one of the cities where the numbers are off by a huge margin.
As The New York Times puts it, When cities try to figure out the amount of greenhouse gases they emit, they tend to undercount and not just by a little.
From the article:
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.
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.
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IMAGE: Graph shows differences between U.S. cities estimates of their greenhouse gas emissions as compared to estimates generated through the standardized Vulcan emissions system view more
Credit: Courtesy Northern Arizona University
Cities have become critical players in reducing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are causing global climate change. Urban areas produce almost 70 percent of those emissions, and city governments are proposing a variety of policy actions aimed at reducing them. Many cities also produce inventories that detail their greenhouse gas emissions.
Now, professor Kevin Gurney of Northern Arizona University s School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems and colleagues have compared the self-reported emissions inventories published by 48 major U.S. cities to estimates from a state-of-the-art emissions information system. As described in