Methodological approaches for estimating regional emission values using national greenhouse gas inventory: A case study of the Republic of Korea

Abstract

Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, the greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory has been considered as an indicator in the evaluation of national GHG reduction. Despite the importance of achieving and evaluating the national GHG reduction targets by the local government, GHG information availed to local governments is very limited, thus necessitating the use of additional resources to create a GHG inventory for each region. This study established and introduced procedures for the selection and distribution of activity data using a national inventory to allow for the estimation of emission values according to region and used them to calculate emissions in Korea. Statistics that were not based on regional data or those based on different data collection systems were identified, and in such cases, data required improvement to achieve consistency. Emission estimation showed that the applied activity data was consistent with the sum of the regional and national values for 12% of GHG emissions. We expect the improvement of certain statistical data to improve data consistency to 82% within a ± 5% variance. With this method, the consistency between the emission data at the national and local or regional levels can be ensured, and ultimately used to establish or evaluate the implementation of a GHG reduction plan. The proposed method can be particularly useful when capacity enhancement of local governments in developing countries is required for GHG inventory management. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.