University City Greenhouse Gas Report

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The emissions coefficients and quantification method employed by the CACP software are consistent with national and international inventory standards established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1996 Revised IPCC Guidelines for the Preparation of National Inventories) and the U.S. Voluntary Greenhouse Gas Reporting Guidelines (EIA from1605). The CACP software has been and continues to be used by over 300 U.S. cities, towns, and counties to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. However, it is worth noting that, although the software provides University City with a sophisticated and useful tool, calculating emissions from energy use with precision is difficult. The model depends upon numerous assumptions, and it is limited by the quantity and quality of available data. With this in mind, it is useful to think of any specific number generated by the model as an approximation of reality, rather than an exact value. Creating the Inventory Creating this emissions inventory required the collection of information from a variety of sources including: AmerenUE, East-West Gateway Council, Laclede Gas, Missouri American Water and the City of University City staff. Data from the year 2005 was used to perform both the community and municipal assessments. One of the first major steps of the inventory was to define each assessment’s organizational boundaries, in terms of the operations that the local government owns and controls, and the community’s operational boundaries as a whole. The municipal inventory is effectively a subset of the community-scale inventory (the two are not iii mutually exclusive). Upon making this distinction, emissions are categorized as direct or indirect and then further classified by the scope of accounting and reporting. The Local Government Operations Protocol, developed by ICLEI to serve as the primary manual for GHG emissions inventories, recommends dividing GHG emissions by the following scopes in order to v improve transparency and to provide utility for different types of climate policies and goals: v Scope 1 - All direct GHG emissions. Direct emissions are emissions from sources within the local government’s organizational boundaries that the local government owns or controls (i.e. emissions from sources within University City’s city limits). Scope 1 emissions are further subdivided into emissions resulting from four (4) separate types of sources:  Stationary combustion [emissions] of fuels to produce electricity, steam, heat, or power using equipment in a fixed location.  Mobile combustion [emissions] of fuels in fleet transportation sources and off-road equipment.  Process emissions from physical or chemical processing, other than fuel combustion; and  Fugitive emissions that are not physically controlled, but result from intentional or unintentional releases, commonly arising from the production, processing, transmission, storage, and use of fuels and other substances, often through joints, seals, packing, gaskets, etc. 2010-2011 Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory, City of University City, MO 12