Toward a Low-Carbon Economy: The Clim’Foot Project Approach …
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3.1 The Toolbox
3.1.1 The National Databases
The national DBs (one per each of the countries involved in the project) include a
set of European EFs, which are common to all countries, and a number of countryspecific EFs. The databases are supplemented by technical documentation aiming
to:
(i) share the data sources used and promote the replicability in other sectors and
contexts;
(ii) enable validation and update of the EFs;
(iii) present the data to external users such as regulators, the public and stakeholder
groups in a transparent way.
The documentation also serves the purpose of ensuring consistency among the
different DBs in terms of completeness of data description, appropriateness of
calculation and coherence of data quality assessment.
The development of national DBs on EFs requires a common methodology, which
defines the content and classification structure of the DBs and the list of greenhouse
gases with their characterization factors, gives recommendations on data collection
and data quality requirements, overviews the main data sources available and ensures
a consistent development of datasets starting from different data sources (e.g. Life
Cycle Inventories (LCI) from LCA databases and National Inventory Reports). This
is a major issue as some data sources deliver subsets of most relevant emissions, while
others give the results in terms of CO 2eq , after aggregating the emissions according
to the characterization factors.
The methodology adopted in Clim’Foot [11] is mainly based on the GHG protocol
for Organizations [6, 7, 12], the ISO 14064 [8] and the IPCC guidelines [13], but takes
also into account the European initiative on Organization Environmental Footprint
(OEF) [14], in particular for the data quality definition.
The Clim’Foot DBs cover the sectors that most contribute to the GHG emissions
following the recommendations of the GHG protocols, thus including Metals, Chemicals, Minerals, Pulp and paper, Semiconductor productions, Refrigerants, and the
emissions related to land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF).
In the DB, each emission factor is a record, and each record represents a unit
process of human activity that exchanges resources (biogenic CO2 uptake) and GHG
emissions with the environment. Each activity represents a process/good/service
and is characterized by a specific reference flow, i.e., the measure of the
process/good/service output. Each record includes:
• metadata, which qualitatively and quantitatively describe the emission factor to
support the end user’s choice of EF for the CF calculation;
• elementary flows, i.e. all the GHGs exchanged with the environment during the
human activity;
77
3.1 The Toolbox
3.1.1 The National Databases
The national DBs (one per each of the countries involved in the project) include a
set of European EFs, which are common to all countries, and a number of countryspecific EFs. The databases are supplemented by technical documentation aiming
to:
(i) share the data sources used and promote the replicability in other sectors and
contexts;
(ii) enable validation and update of the EFs;
(iii) present the data to external users such as regulators, the public and stakeholder
groups in a transparent way.
The documentation also serves the purpose of ensuring consistency among the
different DBs in terms of completeness of data description, appropriateness of
calculation and coherence of data quality assessment.
The development of national DBs on EFs requires a common methodology, which
defines the content and classification structure of the DBs and the list of greenhouse
gases with their characterization factors, gives recommendations on data collection
and data quality requirements, overviews the main data sources available and ensures
a consistent development of datasets starting from different data sources (e.g. Life
Cycle Inventories (LCI) from LCA databases and National Inventory Reports). This
is a major issue as some data sources deliver subsets of most relevant emissions, while
others give the results in terms of CO 2eq , after aggregating the emissions according
to the characterization factors.
The methodology adopted in Clim’Foot [11] is mainly based on the GHG protocol
for Organizations [6, 7, 12], the ISO 14064 [8] and the IPCC guidelines [13], but takes
also into account the European initiative on Organization Environmental Footprint
(OEF) [14], in particular for the data quality definition.
The Clim’Foot DBs cover the sectors that most contribute to the GHG emissions
following the recommendations of the GHG protocols, thus including Metals, Chemicals, Minerals, Pulp and paper, Semiconductor productions, Refrigerants, and the
emissions related to land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF).
In the DB, each emission factor is a record, and each record represents a unit
process of human activity that exchanges resources (biogenic CO2 uptake) and GHG
emissions with the environment. Each activity represents a process/good/service
and is characterized by a specific reference flow, i.e., the measure of the
process/good/service output. Each record includes:
• metadata, which qualitatively and quantitatively describe the emission factor to
support the end user’s choice of EF for the CF calculation;
• elementary flows, i.e. all the GHGs exchanged with the environment during the
human activity;