User Guide. Inventory Module

Transcription

1 User Guide Inventory Module February 2014

2 Community Inventory Resources Getting Started Community Inventory Overview: This guidance document explains the process of conducting a community inventory from beginning to end, including scoping the sources and activities to include, and how to report your inventory results. We recommend this document as the place to start in developing your community inventory. Community Protocol Training Modules: These online training modules will help you to understand key community inventory concepts and methods and data sources for commonly included sources and activities. Community Inventory Scoping and Reporting Tool: This Excel-based tool can help decide and organize the sources and activities to include in your inventory. Data Collection Community Master Data Workbook: Use this preformatted Excel workbook to keep your data organized and complete as you collect it and then enter it into the ClearPath tool. The workbook also contains calculators to estimate emissions from some sources Community Inventory Data Collection and Conditioning Instructions: Detailed instructions on the inventory data collection process, including descriptions of emissions sources in a community, what data is needed for each source, how to collect the data, and how to utilize the Master Data Workbook to keep your data organized. Calculating Emissions and Forecast ClearPath is an easy-to-use online tool to measure your community's greenhouse gas emissions. This tool, developed by ICLEI, offers powerful features to make the inventory process straightforward. Community Inventory Calculations Instructions: Step-by-step instructions on doing community inventory calculations using ClearPath. Community Emissions Forecasting Instructions: Step-by-step instructions on creating a community emissions forecast using ClearPath. Reporting Community Inventory Report Template: Use this customizable template to simplify and speed up creation of a report that will effectively communicate your inventory results to the audiences you want to reach. Access all resources at Page 2

3 Contents User Guide... 1 Inventory Module... 1 Community Inventory Resources... 2 Getting Started... 4 Community and Government Tracks... 4 Working with Charts... 5 Creating an Inventory... 6 Year... 7 Status... 8 Global Warming Potentials... 8 Naming Year Associations Transportation Factor Sets Waste Characterization Grid Electricity Calculations Page Layout/Navigation Naming Records Data Entry Scope 3 and Information Only flags Indicators Notes Reports Summary Reports Detailed Reports Comparative Reports Closing Page 3

4 Getting Started Welcome to ClearPath, an online application for the calculation, tracking and management of greenhouse gas emissions at the government operations and community scales. This user guide covers the greenhouse gas inventory module of the application. User guides for forecasting and action planning are provided as separate documents. To get started using ClearPath, go to Some users will need to work with multiple jurisdictions (for example, users with councils of governments, regional agencies, or consultants). ClearPath allows use of a single username and password to access the data for each jurisdiction. You can switch between jurisdictions by clicking the arrow and jurisdiction name in the upper right corner of the screen. This will open a menu of all jurisdiction for which you have access. From there you may simply choose the name of the jurisdiction you wish to work on next. Figure 1. Jurisdiction Switcher The Inventory Module ClearPath provides the basis for all greenhouse gas management activities done in the application, allowing the user to perform inventories consistent with the Local Government Operations Protocol and the US Community Protocol. The greenhouse gas inventory provides the basis for long term emissions forecasting, which in turn provide the basis for the development of Climate Action Plans. At the completion of the monitoring module, anticipated in late 2014, users will be able to produce a greenhouse gas inventory, forecast, climate action plan, and monitor progress all from within a single application. ClearPath is part of the Climate Pathways program of emissions management resources provided to ICLEI members. Go to to find trainings and instructions on getting started with an inventory and collecting data. A significant part of the work of completing an inventory is in data collection. It is recommended that you carefully read the data gathering instructions and organize your data in the appropriate Master Data Workbook for either government operations or community before you begin performing inventory calculations in ClearPath. Community and Government Tracks ClearPath is organized into two separate tracks, one for Government Operations accounting and one for Community Scale accounting. You can create and manage data for both types of greenhouse gas Page 4

5 inventories simultaneously. To select a track, click the appropriate icon that corresponds to government operations or community scale. Figure 2. Selecting a Track Selecting a track will reveal new tabs for navigation in the tool within the track to the Inventories, Forecasts, and Reports tabs. All of the tabs function similarly, but with minor differences depending on which track you are on. The Inventories Tab indicates whether you are on the Community or Government Operations track. If you wish to change tracks, you will need to first revisit the Home tab and select the other track from the icons available there. Working with Charts Throughout ClearPath, charts are displayed to visualize your data to reveal the relative contribution of individual records within a category or from across the categories themselves. All charts may be easily extracted from the application by using the menu available at the upper right of the chart, designated by four horizontal lines. From this menu, you can either send an image of the chart directly to a printer or download the image in one of several available image formats. Vector image types such as PNG and SVG are available to facilitate the user s ability to further refine an image using the image editing software of their choice. Page 5

6 Figure 3 Example Charts and Menu Creating an Inventory An Inventory is the way to associate a number of individual greenhouse gas calculations together to make up a single inventory project. Inventories have properties that apply to all calculations within in, such as the calendar year it represents, its status, and certain sets of coefficients that are applied in various calculations. You can create a new inventory or view a list of all the inventories within a track by selecting the track and clicking the Inventories tab. Within the Inventories tab you will find a list of existing inventories within the track, and buttons for creating new inventories and factor sets. Before you can begin entering data for an inventory you will need to create a new inventory record; do this by selecting New Inventory. Once you have started one or more inventories in the application, you will also be able to navigate directly to an inventory by selecting it from the list of inventories at the upper right of the home page screen. Within ClearPath there are no limits to the number of Inventories you can create. As you perform periodic re-inventories you will be able to manage all inventory data within this application and easily move from one inventory to another. The rest of this section lists some key properties of inventories that are set at the beginning of creating a new inventory. Page 6

7 Figure 4. Create a New Inventory Year In keeping with standard practice of greenhouse gas inventories, each Inventory represents emissions generated by activities in a single calendar year. Selecting a year will associate your inventory with the emissions Factors Sets that you have defined for your community and government operations. Factor Sets will be described in greater detail in the next section. Occasionally there is a need to revisit and revise an inventory due to a change in emissions factors or some other piece of data, however you may want to retain the original records of the initial inventory in their original state. To facilitate this, ClearPath was designed to allow for multiple inventories to be associated with an individual year. This raises the potential of confusion for which inventory represents the final official tally of emissions for a single year. For this reason a checkbox titled Official Inventory for Selected Year was created to allow you to clearly indicate which inventory is the inventory of record for that year. In addition to being useful for your record keeping, this designation has implications for other functions within the application. For example, time series reports that compare one inventory to the next will only compare Official inventories for each year. Page 7

8 Figure 5. Inventory Record Properties Status For your record keeping, there is also an option to indicate whether an Inventory is In Progress or Complete. This can be a very important consideration when multiple staff have access to the tool and where staff turnover may be a factor. Indicating completed inventories also allows ICLEI to recognize your jurisdiction s milestone completion. Global Warming Potentials Global Warming Potential is a term that is used to refer to multipliers that are applied to all non-co 2 greenhouse gases in order to present them in a common term that indicates their relative strength of the greenhouse effect they have in the atmosphere. After these multipliers are applied, results are presented in terms of CO 2 equivalent or CO 2 e. As climate science has continued to develop, the global warming potentials of many gases have been updated. Global warming potential values are first established through global scientific consensus by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For many years the state of practice in the United States has been to maintain alignment with federal agencies, which have used the values published in the IPCC 2 nd Assessment Report. Recently the US Environmental Protection Agency has started the process of moving its accounting to the values published in the IPCC 4 th Assessment Report. While this change is expected to take some time to be implemented, it is anticipated that in the near future the IPCC 4 th Assessment Report values will become standard practice in greenhouse gas accounting. Page 8

9 As these changes are underway, there may be compelling reasons to select the 2 nd or 4 th Assessment values depending on the circumstances in your community. For example, you may which to maintain consistency with past inventories for the time being. Alternatively you may want to move to the 4 th Assessment values now, in order to facilitate consistency with future inventories. As you begin creating an inventory you will need to make a selection to apply the either the 2 nd or 4 th IPCC Assessment Report values. This will apply the appropriate values throughout your inventory wherever necessary. Note that changing this selection after you have started creating emissions calculation records will not change any existing calculations automatically. If you do need to change this selection in the course of an inventory, you will need to edit and re-save each calculation to have the new global warming potential values applied to the final result. Factor Sets For a number of greenhouse gas calculations there are variables that are may change depending on your location and the year for which your inventory is being performed. These same variables may be needed for a variety of calculations throughout your inventory. In order to reduce repetitive data entry, Factor Sets were created for some of the most common types of variables that are used this way: Fuel economy and emissions rates for on-road transportation, Grid electricity emissions factors, and Waste characterization factors. Figure 6. Creating New Factor Sets Page 9

10 To begin select the Factor Sets button. Within this page are collapsible sections for the three types of factor sets. You can define as many factor sets as you need which you can apply where relevant throughout the inventory. Within each Factor Set type you can add new sets by clicking the Add Factor Set button. To delete a Factor Set, click the Remove button just below the set. While you create and manage these factor sets, keep the Name and Year Association attributes of a Factor Set in mind to help you get the most beneficial use of them. Naming Each Factor Set requires a name. These names can be useful in defining different Factor Sets for different types of calculations within a category. You can define and name Factor Sets to represent any group of inventory records that you wish to be able to reference. Factor sets can be defined for a specific group of fleet vehicles or for an average waste characterization for the entire community, for example. Choose whatever kind of grouping is appropriate for the level of detail you have in your input data. If you create a significant number of Factor Sets, a careful naming convention will help you to easily identify the correct ones to be associated with a particular emissions calculation. Year Associations Factor Sets are primarily designed to help you manage variables that change over time. As such they are inherently tied to a particular year. When you establish a Factor Set, you must associate it with a calendar year. That Factor Set will only be available for calculations being performed in an inventory for the corresponding calendar year selection. Transportation Factor Sets Within the transportation section, Factor Sets will allow you to specify fuel economy and per-mile CH 4 and N 2 O rates for a variety of vehicle classes that cover both government operations and community scale inventories. These Factor Sets are only used in calculations where vehicle-miles travelled (VMT) is the input. Note that you may define a Factor Set that corresponds to any group of vehicles. This could be for the on-road average characteristics of all vehicles in the community, or specific model years of vehicles in your fleet. Each transportation Factor Set contains fields for both gasoline and diesel fueled vehicles and for each the most common vehicle classifications. A single Factor Set could be developed to address all of the transportation calculations in an inventory if only the aggregated, community-wide fleet fuel economy and emissions rates were utilized. Government Operations inventories may have the need to create multiple Factor Sets for a single year, if there are multiple groups of vehicles with different characteristics that need to be accounted for separately, such as fleet passenger cars versus those used in employee commute calculations. Regardless of how the Factor Sets are used, a careful and descriptive naming convention should be used to define Factor Sets that make them easy to identify and use in specific inventory calculations. For example you may want to create Factor Sets for with names like Fleet, Model Year 2010 Passenger Cars or Community On-Road Average. For Community inventory on-road passenger vehicles, most communities will use factors from the tables below. If you have regionally specific information, you may substitute that. Page 10

11 Table 1 Passenger Vehicle N2O and CH4 Emission Factors by inventory year (g/mile) Gasoline Passenger Cars Gasoline Light Trucks Year N 2 0 CH 4 N 2 0 CH Diesel Passenger Cars Diesel Light Trucks All Source: GHG Inventory 2012, ANNEX 3 Methodological Descriptions for Additional Source or Sink Categories. Calculated from tables A-97, A-99, A-100 and A-103. Page 11

12 Table 2 Default fuel efficiency by vehicle type for inventory year Inventory Year Average Fuel Efficiency for year Passenger Car Light Trucks Source: Page 12

13 Figure 7. Transport Factor Sets Waste Characterization Waste Factor Sets are designed to allow you to specify the composition of the waste stream in your community or government operations. Use these to define the percentage of greenhouse gas generating waste types for various waste streams produced by your community or government operations. Figure 8. Waste Characterization Factor Sets Page 13

14 Note that because you only need to specify greenhouse gas generating waste types, the percentages do not need to add up to 100%, though they should never exceed that number. Also note that some categories overlap and should not be used in combination with other types. Mixed Paper and Mixed Organics are intended for use when you do not know the breakdown of individual paper types or specific percentage of food waste versus yard waste. Attributing percentages to the mixed categories and the individual waste types would result in double counting. Again, a careful naming convention for your Factor Sets is a good practice to help you locate and apply them in the correct calculation. You can define Factor Sets to reference for any waste stream for which you want to calculate emissions from individually. If you have data for commercial waste and residential waste separately, a Factor Set for each one would allow you to capture the differences in the characteristics of waste generated by those different sectors. You can find data for waste characterization factor sets from local waste characterization studies. If you don t have specific waste characterization data, you may simply specify 100% Mixed MSW. Grid Electricity Factor Sets for Grid Electricity are straightforward and most users will only need to create one Factor Set for each calendar year they perform an inventory for. When entering emissions factors for grid electricity pay close attention to the units involved as all the calculations in the tool that reference them are set up to correspond with the units specified of lbs CO 2 /MWh and lbs CH 4 and N 2 O/GWh. Figure 9. Grid Electricity Factor Sets For more information on collecting emissions factor data to populate the Grid Electricity Factor Sets, please refer to the table below, which provides factors for a set of regions called egrid, developed by the US EPA. Data for egrid is usually updated every two years; to view data for earlier inventory years and to check whether more recent data is available, go to: If you have more locally specific emissions factors (usually these will be developed by your utility), you may substitute these. Page 14

15 Figure 9: egrid Sub-regional Grid Map Page 15

16 Table egrid Electricity Emission Factors by egrid Sub-region egrid subregion egrid sub-region name acronym CO 2 lb/mwh CH 4 lb/gwh N 2 O lb/gwh CO 2 e lb/mwh AKGD ASCC Alaska Grid ASCC 1, , AKMS ASCC Miscellaneous ASCC ERCT ERCOT All TRE 1, , FRCC FRCC All FRCC 1, , HIMS HICC Miscellaneous HICC 1, , HIOA HICC Oahu HICC 1, , MROE MRO East MRO 1, , MROW MRO West MRO 1, , NYLI NPCC Long Island NPCC 1, , NEWE NPCC New England NPCC NYCW NPCC NYC/Westchester NPCC NYUP NPCC Upstate NY NPCC RFCE RFC East RFC RFCM RFC Michigan RFC 1, , RFCW RFC West RFC 1, , SRMW SERC Midwest SERC 1, , SRMV SERC Mississippi Valley SERC 1, , SRSO SERC South SERC 1, , SRTV SERC Tennessee Valley SERC 1, , SRVC SERC Virginia/Carolina SERC 1, , SPNO SPP North SPP 1, , SPSO SPP South SPP 1, , CAMX WECC California WECC NWPP WECC Northwest WECC RMPA WECC Rockies WECC 1, , AZNM WECC Southwest WECC 1, , Source: egrid2010 Version 1.0 Sub-region data (Year 2009 Data), Page 16

17 Calculations Page Layout/Navigation From the Inventory Records screen you can select Edit Records to navigate to the individual calculators which will calculate GHG emissions from input data on emissions-generating activities and sources. Figure 10 List of Inventories Calculators are organized according to sector categories, which are displayed in a horizontal row of tabs just below the main application navigation. The names of these tabs and corresponding categories change depending on whether you are on the government operations or community track (see Figure 11 on the following page). These categories will organize the results of your inventory according to the appropriate sector. Some identical calculations appear within multiple sector categories, such as emissions associated with energy use in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. In those cases, the calculations proceed similarly (with minor differences appropriate for calculations in each sector); however the primary purpose of this categorization is for categorization of the resulting emissions data. You should enter activity and source data in the appropriate category to ensure clear organization of your results. Within each category there will be a list of available calculators that cover distinct sources and activities common to the sector. Occasionally there will be alternate methods for those sources and activities to accommodate the data and approaches that are available to you, or to enter previously calculated emissions into the application directly. Note that not every calculator is needed for any given inventory. Refer to the Local Government Operations Protocol, Community Protocol, and Climate Pathways Instructions documents to help determine the boundaries of your inventory as the first step in the inventory process. Page 17

18 Figure 11. Community Inventory Sector Categories Figure 12. Government Operations Sector Categories Naming Records Each calculation record must be given a name. Carefully choosing a naming convention will help you to manage data and perform additional analysis outside of ClearPath if needed. For example you may have independent sources of data for residential and commercial waste generation. You could maintain individual records for each and name them appropriately to keep track of the origin of the two different waste types. In this case you may want to tie each record back to a specific waste characterization factor set that captures the differences between residential and commercial waste streams. This is but one example of how naming records can help you organize output data. In other cases you may want to name records for individual departments within your government operations inventory, such that you could develop reports for each department or individual buildings once your inventory is complete. A well-defined naming convention for your records will help to facilitate detailed reporting capabilities. Page 18

19 Figure 13. Calculation Record Data Entry Data Entry Entering data for each record is a straightforward process. Simply click in the input cell and enter the appropriate data. If you are unsure of what is asked for, use the pop-up help feature to learn more. Some data entry fields present options that can be selected from a drop-menu for things like fuel types or units. These selections will trigger appropriate unit conversions and application of the correct emissions factors to complete a calculation. These background calculations utilize published emissions factors and other coefficients from either the Local Government Operations or Community Protocols. One caveat to note is that emissions factors and conversion factors do not exist for every combination of fuel types and unit sections. For example, a natural gas record has acceptable units of Therms or MMBtu for input. Selecting a unit of gallons for natural gas will produce 0 for the result. Such combinations are not expected to be a limitation since data measurements are typically not done in those combinations. However, this behavior underscores the need for you to be aware of the units of your data as you are using the tool. Rarely, you may need to make some conversions outside the tool before you can complete a calculation. Some calculators allow you to perform a calculation in more than one way, for example, using either population or site-specific data. You must enter data consistent with the type of calculation selected, or the result will be zero. Scope 3 and Information Only flags Each calculator has the ability to mark a record as either Scope 3 or Information Only. This will allow you to include sources which you wish to account for in your inventory, but that do not meet the operational, financial, or other definition of control in order to be counted as a Scope 1 or 2 source. These flags will help to define how the records are categorized for reporting. Note that Information Only records will not be included in any summary reports. The Scope 3 designation is only available in the government operations track as the concept of scopes is not utilized in Community Protocol reporting guidance. Instead, your records will automatically be tagged as activities or sources consistent with the Community Protocol reporting guidance. Page 19

20 For all cases where these optional flags are not utilized, a record is automatically categorized according to the Scopes Framework for Government Operations or as either a Source or Activity for Community Scale records. These categorizations are made according to each calculations designation in the Local Government Operations Protocol or Community Protocol. Indicators For many types of calculations, optional indicator fields can be filled out to provide additional context about the data that went into the emissions calculation. These indicators can be incredibly powerful for helping you to chart progress towards your emissions reduction goals and normalize your data to account for external factors that may have caused changes in greenhouse gas generating activity levels from one inventory to the next. It is advisable to populate these indicators whenever possible. Notes All records in ClearPath can be appended with notes. You can utilize the notes field to record any relevant information about the record including the source of the data entered, or a more complete definition of what the record represents, such as activity within a particular geographic or organizational boundary. Reports ClearPath has built in reporting functions to allow you to extract your inventory data for the development of narrative reports and additional analysis. The following reports are available as of February 2014: Summary Reports Summary reports are designed to pull aggregated inventory data, grouped according to which type of report it is. The Inventory Report by Sector will group CO 2 e according to the same category organization of the inventory tool. The Inventory Report by Scope will aggregate results according to the Scopes accounting framework for government operations inventories and the Source and Activity framework for Community Scale inventories. Table 1 provides a summary of the type of aggregation for each type. Page 20

21 Figure 14. Inventory Reports Table 3. Inventory Report Categorizations Inventory Report by Sector Inventory Report by Scope Inventory by Source/Activity Community Residential Energy, Commercial Energy, Industrial Energy, Transportation, Water and Wastewater, Solid Waste, Process and Fugitive, Agriculture, Consumption Based, Upstream Impacts of Activities Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3 As defined by the ICLEI/WRI/C40 Global Protocol for Community Scale Emissions Sources and Activities as defined in the ICLEI-USA, US Community Protocol Government Operations Buildings and Facilities, Vehicle Fleet, Transit Fleet, Employee Commute, Solid Waste, Water and Wastewater, Process and Fugitive, Electric Power Generation Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3 N/A Detailed Reports The detailed report is intended to allow you to obtain all the inputs and outputs of every record in your inventory. This report, when exported can provided a valuable reference for quickly locating the inputs used in your inventory if they are needed for information requests or general reference. Formatting of this report is challenging due to the number of variables involved across all the records. After you have exported the results, sorting by calculation type and cutting and pasting records into a Page 21

22 more organized format will likely be required to perform post processing of your results and the generation of custom charts and tables. Comparative Reports A key feature of ClearPath is that you can perform multiple inventories and manage periodic inventory data in a single application. Comparative reports perform the same report as the Sector and Scope summary reports, but for multiple years. These reports will show side by side totals for each aggregation group and allow you to visualize progress towards overall emissions reductions from one inventory to the next. Note that because it is possible for more than one inventory to be recorded for a calendar year, this report will only include those inventories that have been marked as the Official Inventory for that year. Marking an inventory as Official can be done in the Inventory Parameters page. Figure 15. Comparative Report By Sector Closing Performing greenhouse gas inventories is a complex practice where a substantial portion of the work is involved in collecting, organizing, and understanding the data available related to emissions generating sources and activities. The ClearPath Inventory Module is designed to make the final step of calculations as straightforward as possible. As ClearPath continues to develop, you can look forward to more ways to utilize your inventory data to understand trends in energy and emissions from your community and local government operations and make effective planning decisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cost. Page 22