Inventory reporting of livestock emissions: the impact of the IPCC 1996 and 2006 Guidelines

Abstract

The livestock sector is a major contributor to agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) and nitrogen (N) emissions and efforts are being made to reduce these emissions. National emission inventories are the main tool for reporting emissions. They have to be consistent, comparable, complete, accurate and transparent. The quality of emission inventories is affected by the reporting methodology, emission factors and knowledge of individual sources. In this paper, we investigate the effects of moving from the 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines on the emission estimates from the livestock sector. With Austria as a case study, we estimated the emissions according to the two guidelines, revealing marked changes in emission estimates from different source categories resulting from changes in the applied methodology. Overall estimated GHG emissions from the livestock sector decreased when applying the IPCC 2006 methodology, except for emissions from enteric fermentation. Our study revealed shifts in the relative importance of main emission sources. While the share of CH4 emissions from enteric fermentation and manure management increased, the share of N2O emissions from manure management and soils decreased. The most marked decrease was observed for the share of indirect N2O emissions. Our study reveals a strong relationship between the emission inventory methodology and mitigation options as mitigation measures will only be effective for meeting emission reduction targets if their effectiveness can be demonstrated in the national emission inventories. We include an outlook on the 2019 IPCC Refinement and its potential effects on livestock emissions estimates. Emission inventory reports are a potent tool to show the effect of mitigation measures and the methodology prescribed in inventory guidelines will have a distinct effect on the selection of mitigation measures.

A 130‐year global inventory of methane emissions from livestock: Trends, patterns, and drivers

“…The Tier 2 method was used for major emitters including dairy cattle, nondairy cattle, buffaloes, sheep, and goats, and the trends of body weight were considered in the estimation of pig emissions. These efforts could help reduce the uncertainty of estimation of CH 4 emissions from livestock, as more sophisticated information on livestock production was incorporated and new revised parameters were used (Amon et al, 2021; IPCC, 2019). However, there are still some uncertain sources in this study.…”

“…Compared to the IPCC 2006 guidelines (IPCC, 2006), the IPCC, 2019 refinement guidelines have several improvements including: (1) update of the Tier 1 enteric emission factors by considering the differences between high and low productivity systems; (2) improvement of the Tier 1 and 2 methods for estimating manure management emissions by incorporating more variables and also the differences in livestock productivity systems; and (3) revision of some Tier 2 parameters based on more sophisticated livestock information (Figure 1). These efforts aim at reducing uncertainty of estimates by providing more up‐to‐date scientific knowledge in the refined guidelines (Amon et al, 2021; IPCC, 2019).…”

Anaerobic digestion and recycling of kitchen waste: a review

“…According to the literature (Amon et al 2021;Di et al 2007;Uusitalo et al 2014;Yu et al 2020), the additional carbon emissions from anaerobic digestion ranged from 34.3 to 82.8 (kg CO 2 equivalent•t −1 ) with 70 (kg CO 2 equivalent•t −1 ) as a reference value in this study. The organic matter degradation rate of kitchen waste is 60%-80%, and the rate of biogas production per unit of organic matter from (1)…”

Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Beef Cattle Breeding Based on the Ecological Cycle Model

“…Although the share of China’s livestock sector in total agricultural GHG emissions significantly declined from 47.13% in 2009 to 43.61% in 2019, there has been a lot of room to improve [ 33 , 34 ]. In addition, as a potent tool whose methodology will have a distinct effect on the selection of mitigation measures and show the effect of these measures, the latest emission inventory reports with up-to-date parameters and data should be selected and used [ 35 ].…”