Revisiting Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories

This viewpoint article examines the methods local governments use to measure community-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, highlighting the lack of a universal standard and the challenges of accounting for imported and exported goods.

• There is currently no universally accepted standard for measuring greenhouse gas emissions at the local level to track progress toward climate goals, although various protocols are being developed.
• A significant challenge in community GHG assessments is determining how to account for emissions from goods and materials that are produced within the community but consumed elsewhere, or consumed within the community but produced elsewhere.
• Most current community-scale GHG emission assessments focus on energy use within boundaries. The authors propose that treating industry separately from both production and consumption perspectives would be more effective than including it in general community-scale inventories.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2012). Revisiting Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories. https://www.sei.org/publications/revisiting-community-scale-greenhouse-gas-inventories/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Revisiting Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories. 2012. https://www.sei.org/publications/revisiting-community-scale-greenhouse-gas-inventories/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Revisiting Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories |date=17 April 2012 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/revisiting-community-scale-greenhouse-gas-inventories/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2012revisiting, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Revisiting Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2012}, month = apr, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/revisiting-community-scale-greenhouse-gas-inventories/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }