Description | Climate change causes a number of environmental mechanisms that affect both the endpoint human health and ecosystem health. Climate change models are in general developed to assess the future environmental impact of different policy scenarios. Greenhouse gases emission indicators encompass a variety of measurements on the emission and concentration of Greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are those gaseous constituents of the atmosphere, both natural and anthropogenic, that absorb and emit radiation at specific wavelengths within the spectrum of thermal infrared radiation emitted by the Earth‘s surface, the atmosphere itself, and by clouds. This property causes the greenhouse effect. This indicator measures the emissions of the six main GHGs which have a direct impact on climate change. This indicator aim to quantify the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) avoided as a result of implementation of NBS. GHG emissions through NBS can be avoided through reduced consumption of heating and cooling energy demands at building scale for instance. The extend of GHG emissions is one of the most widely used life cycle impact assessment indicators and the amount avoided is usually employed during scenario comparisons - The total amount of Greenhouse gas emissions avoided as a result of implementation of specific NBS.
- Comparison with calculations of carbon consumption of equivalent non-NBS actions (e.g. through Life Cycle Assessment).
- A close relation to energy consumption at building scale.
- Calculation of avoided GHG emissions (Pan et al., 2016).
- Improve comfort in buildings and at street level through increased energy savings at building and street level by the insulating effect of plants (Alexandri and Jones, 2008; Zinzi and Agnoli, 2011; Malys, 2016).
|
Scale as linked to D2.2 framework | - National
- City
- Neighborhood
- Project area
- Street
- Household
|
Data source [ link to data framework] | - Manually input by project partners
|
Data Needs | To calculate the avoided GHG emissions through building cooling, GI-Val is used. The data resolution is a building. Required data are: - Net additional area of green roof
- % building(s) air conditioned
- Yearly air conditioning use
Method to calculate avoided GHG emissions through transportation is tentative - GHG Emissions Calculation Tool by Greenhouse Gas Protocol requires data
- 1. Method of travel
- 2. Travel distance and units/weight distance and units/passenger distance and units
- However, it calculates the emission, not avoided emission
- Alternative 1: using SCCC tool
- Data about use of sustainable transport (cycling, walking)/distance
- calculating the avoided GHG emission (GHG emission might have been induced if the user used a car)
- Alternative 2: using data about reduced traffic (2.3.11) - TBC
|
Expected Outputs | |
Calculation methods | To calculate the avoided GHG emissions through building cooling, GI-Val is used. |
Links and references | - Goedkoop, M., Heijungs, R., Huijbergts, M., Schryver, A.D., Struijs, J., van Zelm, R., 2009. ReCiPe 2008 A life cycle impact assessment method which comprises harmonised category indicators at the midpoint and the endpoint level First edition Report I: Characterisation. URL: https://www.leidenuniv.nl/cml/ssp/publications/recipe_char acterisation.pdf Date of access: November 2017.
- Gerdes, H., Bassi, S., Portale, E., Mazza, L., Srebotnjak, T., Porch, L., 2011. In Stream, D2.2 Final Report: Evaluation of Indicators for EU Policy Objectives. URL: https://www.ecologic.eu/sites/files/publication/2016/1901- final-report-d2-2-evaluation-of-indicators-for-eu-policy objectives.pdf Date of access: November 2017.
- https://ghgprotocol.org/calculation-tools
- https://www.merseyforest.org.uk/services/gi-val/
|
