Weekly greenhouse gas emissions of municipalities: Methods and comparisons

Local authorities need timely information on their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and their causes, comparison with other municipalities and tools for dissemination of information to the citizens. This paper presents a weekly GHG emission calculation system, CO₂-report, which provides such data for citizens and local decision-makers in a timely manner, in contrast to the official emissions statistics, which are available on an annual basis 1–2 years afterwards. In this paper, we present the methodology and three main outputs of CO₂-report: (1) weekly GHG emissions; (2) advance annual emissions; and (3) final annual emissions for 2009 with comparison of 64 municipalities in Finland. We explain the reasons for the large variability of annual emissions, from 5 to 13 t CO₂-eq/capita, discuss the accuracy of advance and final emission estimates at local level, and show the weekly variability of emissions for three example municipalities with different emission profiles.