Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks 1990 – 2018
An emissions inventory that identifies and quantifies a country’s anthropogenic1 sources and sinks of greenhouse gases is essential for addressing climate change. This inventory adheres to both (1) a comprehensive and detailed set of methodologies for estimating sources and sinks of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and (2) a common and consistent format that enables Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to compare the relative contribution of different emission sources and greenhouse gases to climate change.
In 1992, the United States signed and ratified the UNFCCC. As stated in Article 2 of the UNFCCC, “The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.
Parties to the Convention, by ratifying, “shall develop, periodically update, publish and make available…national inventories of anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol, using comparable methodologies…” The United States views this report as an opportunity to fulfill these commitments.
This chapter summarizes the latest information on U.S. anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission trends from 1990 through 2018. To ensure that the U.S. emissions inventory is comparable to those of other UNFCCC Parties, the estimates presented here were calculated using methodologies consistent with those recommended in the 2006 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (IPCC 2006). The structure of this report is consistent with the UNFCCC guidelines for inventory reporting, as discussed in Box ES- 1.
In following the UNFCCC requirement under Article 4.1 to develop and submit national greenhouse gas emission inventories, the emissions and removals presented in this report and this chapter are organized by source and sink categories and calculated using internationally-accepted methods provided by the IPCC in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (2006 IPCC Guidelines). Additionally, the calculated emissions and removals in a given year for the United States are presented in a common manner in line with the UNFCCC reporting guidelines for the reporting of inventories under this international agreement. The use of consistent methods to calculate emissions and removals by all nations providing their inventories to the UNFCCC ensures that these reports are comparable. The presentation of emissions and removals provided in this Inventory does not preclude alternative examinations, but rather this Inventory presents emissions and removals in a common format consistent with how countries are to report Inventories under the UNFCCC. The report itself, and this chapter, follows this standardized format, and provides an explanation of the application of methods used to calculate emissions and removals.
EPA also collects greenhouse gas emissions data from individual facilities and suppliers of certain fossil fuels and industrial gases through its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP).5 The GHGRP applies to direct greenhouse gas emitters, fossil fuel suppliers, industrial gas suppliers, and facilities that inject carbon dioxide (CO2) underground for sequestration or other reasons and requires reporting by sources or suppliers in 41 industrial categories. 6 Annual reporting is at the facility level, except for certain suppliers of fossil fuels and industrial greenhouse gases. In general, the threshold for reporting is 25,000 metric tons or more of CO2 Eq. per year. Facilities in most source categories subject to GHGRP began reporting for the 2010 reporting year while additional types of industrial operations began reporting for reporting year 2011. While the GHGRP does not provide full coverage of total annual U.S. GHG emissions and sinks (e.g., the GHGRP excludes emissions from the agricultural, land use, and forestry sectors), it is an important input to the calculations of national-level emissions in the Inventory.
Data presented in this Inventory report and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) are complementary. The GHGRP dataset continues to be an important resource for the Inventory, providing not only annual emissions information, but also other annual information, such as activity data and emission factors that can improve and refine national emission estimates and trends over time. Methodologies used in EPA’s GHGRP are consistent with the 2006 IPCC Guidelines (e.g., higher tier methods). GHGRP data also allow EPA to disaggregate national inventory estimates in new ways that can highlight differences across regions and subcategories of emissions, along with enhancing application of QA/QC procedures and assessment of uncertainties. EPA uses annual GHGRP data in a number of categories to improve the national estimates presented in this Inventory consistent with IPCC methodological guidance. See Annex 9 for more information on specific uses of GHGRP data in the Inventory (e.g., natural gas systems).
By Environmental Protection Agency, EPA