Quantification of Fossil Fuel CO₂ Emissions on the Building/Street Scale for a Large U.S. City

Abstract

In order to advance the scientific understanding of carbon exchange with the land surface, build an effective carbon monitoring system, and contribute to quantitatively based U.S. climate change policy interests, fine spatial and temporal quantification of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions, the primary greenhouse gas, is essential. Called the "Hestia Project", this research effort is the first to use bottom-up methods to quantify all fossil fuel CO(2) emissions down to the scale of individual buildings, road segments, and industrial/electricity production facilities on an hourly basis for an entire urban landscape. Here, we describe the methods used to quantify the on-site fossil fuel CO(2) emissions across the city of Indianapolis, IN. This effort combines a series of data sets and simulation tools such as a building energy simulation model, traffic data, power production reporting, and local air pollution reporting. The system is general enough to be applied to any large U.S. city and holds tremendous potential as a key component of a carbon-monitoring system in addition to enabling efficient greenhouse gas mitigation and planning. We compare the natural gas component of our fossil fuel CO(2) emissions estimate to consumption data provided by the local gas utility. At the zip code level, we achieve a bias-adjusted Pearson r correlation value of 0.92 (p < 0.001).

High-resolution quantification of atmospheric CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; mixing ratios in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada

“…Phoenix through the Hestia project (Gurney et al, 2012), on the national scale, such as in China (Zhao 83 et al, 2012), and on the global scale (Wang et al, 2013 In an effort to address this gap, this study was focused on quantifying CO2 emissions at a fine 87 spatial and temporal resolution in the GTA and southern Ontario (we expanded the inventory beyond 88 the urban area of the GTA so we could exploit information on CO2 mixing ratios collected at rural 89 areas in central and south-western Ontario, proving additional sites for inventory validation). We 90 present the new high-resolution Southern Ontario CO2 Emissions (SOCE) inventory, which quantifies 91 CO2 emissions from seven source sectors (On-road, Off-road, Area, Point, Marine, Residential, and 92 Commercial natural gas combustion) at 2.5 km x 2.5 km spatial and hourly temporal resolution for 93 an area covering ~26 % of the province of Ontario (~2.8 x 10 5 km 2 ).…”

“…Given current policy needs, a strategy using solely bottom-up or top-down approaches is likely 78 insufficient to evaluate CO2 emissions but rather a synthesis of the two methodologies is required 79 (Miller and Michalak, 2016). Successful examples of high-resolution CO2 inventory development are 80 available on the urban scale, such as the Airparif inventory in Ile-de-France (publicly available at 81 http://www.airparif.asso.fr/en/index/index) and in Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and 82Phoenix through the Hestia project (Gurney et al, 2012), on the national scale, such as in China (Zhao 83 et al, 2012), and on the global scale (Wang et al, 2013 In an effort to address this gap, this study was focused on quantifying CO2 emissions at a fine 87 spatial and temporal resolution in the GTA and southern Ontario (we expanded the inventory beyond 88 the urban area of the GTA so we could exploit information on CO2 mixing ratios collected at rural 89 areas in central and south-western Ontario, proving additional sites for inventory validation). We 90 present the new high-resolution Southern Ontario CO2 Emissions (SOCE) inventory, which quantifies 91 CO2 emissions from seven source sectors (On-road, Off-road, Area, Point, Marine, Residential, and 92 Commercial natural gas combustion) at 2.5 km x 2.5 km spatial and hourly temporal resolution for 93 an area covering ~26 % of the province of Ontario (~2.8 x 10 5 km 2 ).…”

“…Phoenix through the Hestia project (Gurney et al, 2012), on the national scale, such as in China (Zhao 83 et al, 2012), and on the global scale (Wang et al, 2013). However, to our knowledge, there are 84 Atmos.…”

Analysis of CO2 concentration distribution inside and outside small boiler plants

“…The sources of external air pollutant emissions are primarily local (central and local) and district heating systems which provide thermal energy for both housing and industrial facilities and services resulting in the formation of harmful substances in the atmospheric air [10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

Building a Better Urban Picture: Combining Day and Night Remote Sensing Imagery

“…In order to harness the growth and development benefits of urbanization while proactively managing its negative effects [9], there is growing interest in monitoring urban areas at regional and global scales to help thinking globally, as well as obtaining fine details of urban spatial structures at the local scale to facilitate acting locally. For example, practical carbon emission mitigation strategies require knowledge of cities down to the street and individual building level [10].…”