Fixing greenhouse gas accounting at the city scale

The authors propose that city-scale greenhouse gas accounting should shift its focus from national-scale principles of completeness and accuracy toward 'relevance' to better align with the governance structures of city governments. They suggest creating a 'core' category of emissions—such as CO2 from buildings and passenger transport and CH4 from waste management—to help mayors more effectively implement the emission reduction pledges made during COP21.

• Current community-scale protocols, including the Global Protocol for Community-scale GHG emissions (GPC), are based on IPCC rules designed for national scales where completeness, comparability, and accuracy are the primary goals.
• The authors suggest that local-scale accounting should prioritize 'relevance' and categorize emission sources based on the level of influence local policy-makers have over them.
• A proposed 'core' category for city emissions would focus on CO2 from passenger transport and buildings, as well as CH4 from waste management, to increase policy-relevance and support global warming limits of 'well below' 2°C.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2016). Fixing greenhouse gas accounting at the city scale. https://www.sei.org/publications/ghg-accounts-city/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Fixing greenhouse gas accounting at the city scale. 2016. https://www.sei.org/publications/ghg-accounts-city/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Fixing greenhouse gas accounting at the city scale |date=1 November 2016 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/ghg-accounts-city/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2016fixing, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Fixing greenhouse gas accounting at the city scale}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2016}, month = nov, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/ghg-accounts-city/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }