Carbon monitoring

Carbon monitoring refers to tracking how much carbon dioxide or methane is produced by particular activity at a particular point in time. For example, it may refer to tracking methane emissions from agriculture, or carbon dioxide emissions from land use changes, such as deforestation, or from burning fossil fuels, whether in a power plant, automobile, or other device. Because carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas emitted in the largest quantities, and methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas, monitoring carbon emissions is widely seen as crucial to any effort to reduce emissions and thereby slow climate change. Monitoring carbon emissions is key to the cap-and-trade program currently being used in Europe, as well as the one in California, and will be necessary for any such program in the future, like the Paris Agreement. The lack of reliable sources of consistent data on carbon emissions is a significant barrier to efforts to reduce emissions.

Sources of such emissions data include:

Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA)- An online database provided by the Center for Global Development, that includes plant-level emissions for more than 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies around the world, as well as the total emissions from power generation of countries, provinces (or states), and localities. Carbon emissions from power generation account for about 25 percent of global CO₂ emissions.

ETSWAP - An emissions monitoring and reporting system currently in use in the UK and Ireland, which enables relevant organizations to monitor, verify and report carbon emissions, as is required by the EU ETS (European Union Emissions Trading Scheme).

FMS - A system used in Germany to record and calculate annual emission reports for plant operators subject to the EU ETS.

Almost all climate change regulations in the US have stipulations to reduce carbon dioxide and methane emissions by economic sector, so being able to accurately monitor and assess these emissions is crucial to being able to assess compliance with these regulations. Emissions estimates at the national level have been shown to be fairly accurate, but at the state level there is still much uncertainty. As part of the Paris Agreement, the US pledged to “decrease its GHG emissions by 26–28 % relative to 2005 levels by 2025 as part of the Paris Agreement negotiated at COP21. To comply with these regulations, it is necessary to quantify emissions from specific source sectors. A source sector is a sector of the economy that emits a particular greenhouse gas, i.e. methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, which the US has pledged to decrease by 40–45 % relative to 2012 levels by 2025 as a more specific action towards achieving its Paris Agreement contribution.

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