QGasSP – Interim report

The QGasSP project is developing an open-source, browser-based tool to quantify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to spatial planning, focusing on building energy use, transportation, and land use change. The tool employs two distinct frameworks: a territorial approach for monitoring direct emissions within a specific area and a consumption-based approach using a tiered hybrid Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method to enable cross-regional comparisons by tracking global supply chain emissions. To ensure accuracy, the tool combines top-down European datasets (e.g., Eurostat, Exiobase) with bottom-up local data. The report details baseline analyses for four pilot areas—County Meath (Ireland), Rathlin Island (Northern Ireland), Kymenlaakso region (Finland), and the City of Edinburgh (Scotland)—to test the tool's applicability across different urban types and planning scales. The authors conclude that while European datasets provide indicative results, local data is essential for reliable planning, and they suggest that future integration with urban digital twins could further enhance GHG quantification.

• The QGasSP tool implements two quantification modes: a territorial approach to monitor direct emissions within a target area and a consumption-based approach to enable "cross-country, inter-regional and inter-municipality comparisons".
• For consumption-based quantification, the tool uses a tiered hybrid Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, which combines an environmentally extended economic input-output (EIO) approach with process-based LCA data for the land use, traffic, and building sectors.
• The tool's territorial mode for land use change is based on the IPCC LULUCF methodology, covering six broad land categories: forest land, cropland, grassland, wetlands, settlements, and other land.
• The project identifies a significant lack of harmonization in European GHG datasets, noting that while European default datasets (top-down) allow for initial quantification, they often differ from local (bottom-up) realities, such as transport modal shares.
• Baseline analyses for pilot areas demonstrate the tool's versatility across scales, including a commuter region (County Meath), an offshore island (Rathlin Island), a region aiming for carbon neutrality by 2040 (Kymenlaakso), and a major city (Edinburgh).
• The tool is designed as a modular, open-source browser application allowing three user types: expert users who create local set-ups, non-expert users (like planners) who evaluate policy alternatives, and developer users who add new calculation modules.
• The report suggests that urban digital twins, specifically those using the CityGML standard, could resolve data structure inconsistencies and provide a comprehensive bottom-up source for GHG quantification.

APA

Cachia, R., Gartland, D., Grišakov, K., Heinonen, J. T., Kumpulainen, J., Kriiska, K., Lylykangas, K., Moloney, R., O’Shea, J., Oviir, A., Partanen, J., Peterson, K., Teliö, A., & Walke, P. R. (2021). QGasSP – Interim report. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/espon-qgassp-interim-report.pdf

Chicago

Cachia, Rebecca, Donna Gartland, Kristi Grišakov, Jukka Taneli Heinonen, Joonas Kumpulainen, Kaie Kriiska, Kimmo Lylykangas, et al. QGasSP – Interim report. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2021. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/espon-qgassp-interim-report.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{cachia2021qgassp, author = {Cachia, Rebecca and Gartland, Donna and Grišakov, Kristi and Heinonen, Jukka Taneli and Kumpulainen, Joonas and Kriiska, Kaie and Lylykangas, Kimmo and Moloney, Rowan and O’Shea, John and Oviir, Anni and Partanen, Jenni and Peterson, Kaja and Teliö, Aki and Walke, Peter R.}, title = {{QGasSP – Interim report}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2021}, month = jun, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/espon-qgassp-interim-report.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }