Last reviewed on August 12, 2019

Query Tool - Help File

How to query California's GHG Inventory by economic sector and/or by activity:

1. Use the drop down lists in the Query Selections box on the left side of the 2000-2017 query tool form (or the 1990 query tool form) to select a particular sector and/or activity. Your current selections will be tracked in the Summary of the current query selections box on the right side.

2. You may then specify the results for your query by choosing a particular greenhouse gas, measurement, global warming potential estimate, unit, and subset of inventory accounting.

3. Press the Get Data button to see the results from your query in a table. In the table, clicking on a column title will sort the table by the attributes in the column, and clicking on any inventory value will take you to a detailed documentation page describing how the value was estimated.

4. At the top of the results table there are two links: Download Data will allow you to retrieve and save the selected inventory data to your computer in a format (.csv) readable by most spreadsheet and database applications, Graph Data will generate a bar plot of these data.

5. Pressing on the back button of your browser will allow you to return to the query tool page to modify your query or to start a new query by pressing the Start Over button.

If some technical terms are unclear to you, please consult the Glossary of Terms Used in Greenhouse Gas Inventories


Sector Selections:

The California GHG Inventory can be queried by economic sector. GHG emissions and sinks are attributed to a Main Sector and three levels of sub-sectors. For instance, choosing: Industrial > Manufacturing > Stone, Clay, Glass & Cement > Cement will select the subset of emissions attributed to cement manufacturing in California. This choice is made with the following steps:

To modify your query selections you may go back to a drop down list and select All, this will refresh the content of the drop down list and make more choices available again. To start the selection process anew, press the Start Over button.

You do not have to select from the drop down boxes in descending order. This query tool has been designed to update all drop down lists in the "Sector" and "Activity" sections to reflect only subsets of your choice. For instance, one could go directly to the Sub Sector Level 3 drop down list and select Cement to choose the Industrial > Manufacturing > Stone, Clay, Glass & Cement > Cement subset of GHG emissions.

Notes on Sectors:


Activity Selections:

The California GHG Inventory can be queried by activity. Most GHG emissions are estimated on the basis of a given type of activity (Main Activity), such as: fuel combustion, clinker production, animal population, etc. Activity is often divided into different subsets (Activity Subset) such as different fuels for fuel combustion, different species for animal population, etc. For instance, choosing Fuel combustion > Coal will select the subset of emissions attributed to coal burning in California. To do this,

To modify your query selections you may go back to a drop down list and select All, this will refresh the content of the drop down list and make more choices available again. To start the selection process anew, press the Start Over button.

You do not have to select from the drop down boxes in descending order. This query tool has been designed to update all drop down lists in the "Sector" and "Activity" sections to reflect only subsets of your choice. For instance, one could go directly to the Activity Subset drop down list and select Residual fuel oil to choose the subset of GHG emissions resulting from all residual fuel oil use in California, both by combustion and by consumption as a feedstock in other processes.

Notes on Activity:

Please be aware that because this is a top down inventory, detailed quantitative information may not be available for all the activities you are interested in. In the case of fuel combustion, natural gas use is metered at the individual user level and statistics are available to track consumption down to a precise sub-sector of the economy. However, data on the use of other fuels is more difficult to disaggregate and may be tracked only down to one sectorial sub-level. In the case of some activities such as the use of substitutes of ozone depleting substances, emissions can only be estimated currently for the entire State of California.


Greenhouse Gas Selections:

In this section you can specify your query results by choosing:


Query Results:

Once done with query selections and results specification, press on the Get Data button and the query tool will generate a new web page with a table containing the results of your query. These are the actions you may take on the results: