Understanding the Limitations of Provincial Greenhouse Gas Inventory Methodologies

Under the Climate Change Accountability Act, the Province must report its GHG emissions each year, which it does through the Provincial Inventory (PI). Currently, the Province uses emissions amounts from the National Inventory Report (NIR) which uses largely top-down national data, parameters, and assumptions and is produced by the Federal Government to report on GHGs across all line-items in the PI. The NIR uses a mix of national and B.C.-specific data sources. 
 
With the implementation of CleanBC, a robust plan to address GHG emissions across all sectors, it is essential that B.C.'s GHG emissions data be responsive as a tool to measure the outcomes of our efforts.  This will allow us to recalibrate policy responses as necessary to meet our climate goals. 
 
To date, the Climate Action Secretariat has observed several limitations of the applicability and granularity of the NIR emissions estimates for the B.C. context according to the above principles. Due to this, the Province has contracted several projects with the intention of creating B.C.-specific emissions estimation methods for a number of key sectors. These projects have been underway for several years, having produced some proposed alternate methodologies (or in some cases, failing to propose alternative methodologies because of barriers that are specific to each sector and line item). There is a need to take stock of what has been achieved toward the longer-term vision of creating a policy-sensitive and accurate emissions inventory for B.C. (the full intention of which is embodied in the above principles), and what needs to be done at the sectoral emissions quantification level to achieve that vision. 
 
This project is intended to identify where the NIR methods and data sources could be improved, either inside or outside (if necessary) of the current NIR framework, to reflect B.C.'s emissions profile more accurately. This project is intended to be a holistic review of all data sources and pathways to improve the accuracy of the PI through the identification of higher resolution (both spatially and temporally) and/or more complete B.C.-specific data, parameters, and assumptions. The successful completion of this project will provide insight into the degree to which the accuracy and policy-sensitivity of B.C.'s GHG emissions reporting could be improved, as well as identify all the data collection and other barriers the Province will need to address in order to arrive at a fully policy-sensitive PI. PI improvement recommendations may feed into future emissions estimation for B.C., which will help the Province further understand evaluation metrics for B.C.'s existing and forthcoming climate policies, programs and investments under CleanBC.