Greenhouse Gas Inventory Data - 2000 to 2008

Overview

The California greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory compiles statewide anthropogenic GHG emissions and sinks. It includes estimates for carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆), nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and perfluorocarbons (PFCs). The current inventory covers years 2000 to 2008.

A summary of GHG emissions from 2000 to 2008 is linked below. Annual statewide emission inventories provide the basis for establishing historical emission trends. Trends are useful in tracking progress towards a specific goal or target. There are many factors affecting GHG emissions, including the state of the economy, changes in demography, improved efficiency, and changes in environmental conditions such as drought. 2008 saw a small decrease in statewide GHG emissions, driven by a noticeable drop in on-road transportation emissions. 2008 also reflects the beginning of the economic recession and fuel price spikes. A discussion of emission trends for the 2000 to 2008 period and factors affecting different sectors is also provided below.

Data sources include California and federal agencies, international organizations, and industry associations. The calculation methodologies are consistent with the 2006 IPCC guidelines. The current inventory uses global warming potential (GWP) values from the IPCC Second Assessment Report, consistent with the national inventory. Full documentation of data sources and methods is available on this web site.

In preparation for each new edition of the inventory, recalculations are made to correct errors, incorporate new methodologies or, most commonly, to reflect changes in statistical data supplied by other agencies. Emission and sink estimates are recalculated for all years in order to maintain a consistent time-series of estimates within the inventory. This approach follows the recommendation for developing GHG inventories discussed in Chapter 7 of the IPCC Good Practice Guidance document: "In order to assess emission trends it is important that the entire time series of emissions, not just the most recent years, be calculated using the changed or refined methods. It is good practice to recalculate historic emissions when methods are changed or refined, when new source categories are included in the national inventory, or when errors in the estimates are identified and corrected." Thus the new inventory may report a different amount of emission/removal for an earlier year then earlier inventories. The results of all methodology changes and historical data updates will be presented in the “Changes in Estimates” section of each chapter of the 2000-2008 Technical Support Document. This report will be available for download from the publication section of this site in the near future.

2000-2008 Inventory

The current California GHG inventory covers the years 2000 to 2008. GHG emissions for the years 1990 through 1999 are included in the archived 1990-2004 GHG inventory published in November 2007 (available in the archive section of this site).

The California GHG inventory is categorized in three ways:

1. Scoping Plan; follows the categories identified in the ARB Scoping Plan.
2. Process-oriented categories; follows the IPCC categorization to ensure comparability with international inventories.
3. Economic sectors; allows for comparison with other ARB emission inventories, which are similarly categorized.

Select a subset of the inventory

Query the inventory by economic sector and/or by activity. This interactive query tool allows you to select a subset of the inventory in a table, view it or download it to your computer, find out how each of the emissions values was estimated, and plot the data. More details on the query tool's help page.

Download the entire inventory