Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2000
What's New in This Report
All Chapters
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has updated a number of the 100-year greenhouse gas global warming potential (GWP) coefficients,a including methane (increased from 21 to 23), nitrous oxide (decreased from 310 to 296), sulfur hexafluoride (decreased from 23,900 to 22,200), and perfluoromethane (decreased from 6,500 to 5,700) that were reported in an earlier IPCC report.b The greenhouse gas emissions estimates in this report are based on the new IPCC-updated GWPs (see discussion on "Comparison of Global Warming Potentials from the IPCC's Second and Third Assessment Reports" for a comparison of U.S. emissions calculated with the earlier and revised GWPs).
Chapter 1
- In keeping with the 1996 Revised IPCC Guidelines for the Preparation of National Inventories and an IPCC Expert Working Group Meeting on Good Practices in Inventory Preparation held in the United Kingdom in October 1999, a study of the uncertainty in greenhouse gas emissions data was conducted using Monte Carlo simulations. This analysis supplements the results presented in last year’s report for a study of uncertainty strictly in energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. A summary of the current results is included in Chapter 1.
Chapter 2
- In this year’s report, carbon dioxide emissions attributed to nonutility power producers have been removed from the industrial sector and placed in a combined electric power sector, where they have been shared out to end-use sectors in
- proportion to the amount of electricity purchased by each sector.
- In 1998, EIA conducted a Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey. The results of the 1998 survey have been used to calculate emissions from the manufacturing subsector, which makes up 85 percent of the U.S. industrial sector.
Chapter 5
- The data presented in Chapter 5 for HFCs, PFCs, SF6, and other gases are provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This year, the EPA updated a number of its methodologies in order to improve the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the emissions estimates. The Voluntary SF6 Emissions Reduction Partnership, launched by the EPA in 1999, provided new information on SF6 emissions from electric power systems and the magnesium industry. In addition, PFC emissions estimates have been revised on the basis of new data from the EPA’s Voluntary Aluminum Industrial Partnership Program and from its Global Programs Division, which have resulted in revised emission factors for emissions from aluminum production. The EPA revised the methodology for estimating emissions from semiconductor manufacturing to include production data for 1990-1994 and data reported directly by semiconductor manufacturers for other years. For the substitution of ozone-depleting substances, revisions to chemical substitution trends and new information from industry representatives have led to revised assumptions for the EPA Vintaging Model.
aIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 388-390.
bIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 121.
URL: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/report.html