Standards Development

Scope

Atmospheric measurements and analyses combined with spatially explicit anthropogenic and biogenic emissions modelling results are the basis for management of efforts to improve confidence in emissions quantification in the urban domain of cities and their immediately surrounding regions. The standards effort under development, 14070, addresses the need for robustly accurate quantification of GHG emission rates from urban environments, the location of a wide range of GHG emission sources and sinks estimated to be the source of 60% - 80% of global emissions. The approach taken is the description and management of a system combining 4 measurement and modelling elements, 14070 parts 1 – 4, that takes advantage of the strengths of each element. The standard on atmospheric measurement methods, (ISO 14070-1) now at the committee draft stage of development, is combined with those of emissions modelling of both anthropogenic (14070-2), and biogenic (14070-3), sources and sinks in urban settings. The last component (14070-4), will address the analysis methods necessary to combine parts 1 - 3 into a functional emissions quantification system. The proposed standard ISO 14070-2, represents the second part in the series. This proposal for a new work item is a continuation of the work of TC207/SC7 WG 17.

Purpose

Background: Greenhouse gas emissions, resulting substantially from combustion of fossil fuels and other economic activities, are contributing to increases in global temperatures and changes in our climate, adversely impacting our lives. Accurate and precise atmospheric measurements of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations [1] have revealed the rapid and unceasing rise of global GHG concentrations due to human socioeconomic activity [2]. These long-term observations also show a corresponding rise in global temperatures and evidence of these impacts. In response to this mounting evidence, nations, sub-national governments, private enterprises and individuals are establishing and accelerating efforts to reduce GHG emissions while meeting the needs for global development and increasing energy access [3].

UNFCCC’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Taskforce on National Inventories (TFI) has provided guidelines for national GHG inventories [4]. These inventories represent estimates of GHG emissions and removals from a broad spectrum of sources, including transportation, buildings, power plants, waste disposal and treatment sites, etc. In 2019, IPCC updated its recommendations and issued a refinement to the IPCC Guidelines. The 2019 Refinement provides supplementary methodologies, including measurements of GHGs in the atmosphere, to estimate sources that produce emissions of GHGs and sinks that absorb these gases [5]. These measurements will be critical for verification of compliance with Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that are committed by participating countries [6].

The Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Program of WMO was established in 1989 in recognition of the need for improved scientific understanding of the increasing influence of human activities on atmospheric composition and subsequent environmental impacts. Historically, GHG measurements have been made in remote locations to focus on a comprehensive global data record for global background concentrations of greenhouse gases [7]. To identify sources of major GHG emissions and to assess the impact of mitigation efforts, spatially and temporally resolved GHG measurements need to be performed and models used in and near major cities of the globe.

Purpose: GHG emission measurements are being carried out in many locations around the globe; however, there are no established, internationally recognized standards to ensure the accuracy, reliability, consistency and mutual recognition of GHG measurements. These standards will also be crucial for validation of carbon credits that are being implemented in different countries, implementation of mitigation efforts to reduce GHG emissions, and evaluation of their impact. Lack of internationally recognized standards would discourage local and national mitigation efforts.

Addressing Stakeholder Needs: Globally about 70% of GHG emissions originate from cities, where a similar fraction of the world’s population lives. Therefore, any attempt to reverse climate trends must have a focus on cities and their GHG emissions. The UNFCCC’s Paris Accords recognized this fact and the important role of sub-national actors (cities, provinces, and the private sector). Efforts for Accelerating Climate Action in Cities [8] will require public-private partnerships and investments by the private sector in addition to those by governments. There are several broad-based initiatives in this direction. The City-Business Climate Alliance [9] is a joint initiative of the C40 Cities organization [10]; efforts of the CPDP (Climate Positive Development Program) [11] and the WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development) [12] are aimed at accelerating climate actions through citybusiness collaborations. Contributions by the private sector to climate financing and achievement of the vision Healthy Living Spaces for People and Planet [13] will require widely recognized methodologies to quantify GHG emissions.

A critical component of these methods is the mapping of emission sources via spatially and temporally explicit modeling, establishment of accurate baselines, and monitoring of trends; reliability of such trends will be based on accurate measurements of GHG emissions; reductions in emissions will result from mitigation, clean energy, and/or sequestration investments. The WBCSD report states that “as current tools [such as GHG inventories] have limitations, they need to be improved by on-site measurements and data interpretation technological chains.”

Many national, regional and local governments are taking steps to reduce GHG emissions through climate policies that include the introduction of emissions trading programs, carbon and energy taxes, carbon credits, and regulations and standards on energy efficiency targets. To gauge their progress, some cities are using self-reported inventory (SRI) methods based on the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard [14]. Quality of SRIs has recently been tested by comparing SRI’s of 48 U.S. cities with an atmospherically calibrated, U.S. continental, spatially explicit emissions data product carefully isolating fossil fuel emissions for each city [15]. Differences ranged from approximately 60 percent over-reporting to 140 percent under-reporting. A critical element underpinning future efforts will be a set of technical, internationally recognized, documentary measurement and management standards. Many of these initiatives will eventually involve monetization of carbon emissions, a topic of great deal of interest for the private sector.

Current Activities: Globally, there are several efforts to monitor GHG emissions from urban environments; these include monitoring networks in Paris [16], Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Northeast Corridor of the U.S. [17], Toronto [18], Mexico City [19], UK [20], New Zealand [21], and Beijing and Zhangzhou (China) [22]. These efforts have been supported by government organizations such as NOAA, NASA and NIST in the U.S., Environment and Climate Canada, City of Paris in France, National Physical Laboratory and the Met Office in the U.K., International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), Cities of Beijing and Zhangzhou and Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences (CMAS), and many of the National Metrology Institutes around the world, including Japan, South Korea, China, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Switzerland, etc.. An Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) is also established in Europe, with participation by many of the EU countries, to monitor GHG emissions regionally [23]. These efforts have benefited from significant scientific advances achieved over the last decade, both in atmospheric measurement and analysis capabilities and methodologies, and in modelling of emissions to map GHG emissions at the regional and city/local level [24]. These advanced methodologies are poised to provide the private sector and governments with GHG emissions data that would enable assessment of the impact of mitigation efforts and quantify the expected returns on their investments. There have been ongoing efforts by the scientific community to establish globally recognized measurement methods; a workshop is held by the WMO-GAW every two years on Greenhouse Gases and Related Measurement Techniques (GGMT) to review advances in measurement techniques, their reliability and accuracy, and to ensure availability of certified reference standards for GHGs [25]. To complement these efforts, WMO’s Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas Information System (IG3IS) [26] has launched an effort to document “best practices” for measuring, monitoring, mapping, and assessing GHG emissions; this effort involves more than fifty experts from more than thirty countries from around the world [27]. To apply the most advanced scientific methods to determine GHG emission fluxes from urban environments, new approaches have been developed for modelling GHG emissions, atmospheric and satellite monitoring methods, modelling of biogenic CO2 sources and sinks, modelling of atmospheric transport, and data analysis methods [28].

Looking Forward: This project represents the second in development of a series of standards that establish requirements for accurate measurement of GHG emissions in urban environments. The IG3IS best practices represent the foundation upon which standardization of the necessary methodologies can be built to instill confidence in markets and promote fairness in regulation. The critical next step is development and completion of internationally recognized standards that would enable reliable, accurate and spatially and temporally resolved GHG emission measurements at accuracy levels supporting timely and effective mitigation actions and science-based policy decisions. This proposal is for establishment of a New Work Item for USTAG of ISO TC207/SC7 that continues development of such relevant and critically needed standards for GHG emission measurements. This is expected to include a series of standards: Part 1 was focused on GHG measurements in the atmosphere in urban environments; this work is underway and a CD for 14070-1 is being circulated for comments by SC7. This NWIP is for development of a standard for Part 2 which would be focused on models to estimate anthropogenic GHG emissions in urban environments. Future standards on Part 3 would be on modelling of biogenic sources and sinks of GHGs; and Part 4 would be on atmospheric transport and data analysis methods for GHG flux measurements and source apportionment.

Further details are provided in the attached Technical Report.

References:

1. Greenhouse Gases of interest are Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitrous Oxide (N2O) and Fluorinated Gases (HFCs)].

2. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, "The Keeling Curve,": https://scripps.ucsd. edu/programs/keelingcurve/

3. WMO, "IG3IS Implementation Plan," https://www.wmo. int/pages/prog/arep/gaw/documents/IG3ISImplementationPlanEC70.pdf

4. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/2006-ipcc-guidelines-for-national-greenhouse-gas-inventories/

5. https://www.ipcc.ch/2019/05/13/ipcc-2019-refinement/

6. https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/nationally-determined-contributionsndcs/ nationally-determined-contributions-ndcs

7. WMO, "WMO Bulletin," https://public.wmo.int/en/resources/bulletin/integrated-global-greenhouse-gasinformation- system-ig3is

8. World Business Council for Sustainable Development, "Accelerating Climate Action in Cities,” (2020) https://www.c40.org/other/climate-positive-development-program

9. "The City-Business Climate Alliance," 2020. https://www.city-businessclimatealliance.org/

10. "C40 Cities," https://www.c40.org/other/climate-positive-development-program

11. C40 Cities Org., "C40 Climate Positive Development Program," https://www.c40.org/other/climatepositive- development-program

12. WBCSD, "World Business Council for Sustainable Development," https://www.wbcsd.org/

13. WBCSD, ibid.

14. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard: https://ghgprotocol. org/sites/default/files/standards/ghg-protocol-revised.pdf

15. Gurney, K.R., et al., "Under-reporting of greenhouse gas emissions in U.S. cities.," Nature Communications, 12, 553 (2021): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20871-0

16. J. Staufer, G. Broquet, F-M. Bréon, V. Puygrenier, F. Chevallier, I. Xueref-Rémy, E. Dieudonné, M. Lopez, M. Schmidt, M. Ramonet, O. Perrussel, C. Lac, L. Wu, and P. Ciais, “The first 1-year-long estimate of the Paris region fossil fuel CO2 emissions based on atmospheric inversion”, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, pp. 14703–14726, 2016; https://doi:10.5194/acp-16-14703-2016

17. NIST Greenhouse Gas Measurements program: Urban Test Beds, https://www.nist. gov/topics/greenhouse-gas-measurements/urban-test-beds

18. S.C. Pugliese, J.G. Murphy, F.R. Vogel, et al., “High-resolution quantification of atmospheric CO2 mixing ratios in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada”, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 3387–3401, 2018 https: //doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-3387-2018 

19. Mexico City Regional Carbon Impact http://www.epr.atmosfera.unam.mx/Merci-CO2/

20. E.D. White, M. Rigby, M.F. Lunt, T.L. Smallman, E. Comyn-Platt, A.J. Manning, A.L. Ganesan, S. O'Doherty, A.R. Stavert, K. Stanley, M. Williams, P. Levy, M. Ramonet, G.L. Forster, A.C. Manning and P.I. Palmer, “Quantifying the UK's carbon dioxide flux: an atmospheric inverse modelling approach using a regional measurement network”, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 19, pp. 4345-4365 (2019) 10.5194/acp-19-4345-2019.

21. K. Steinkamp, S.E. Mikaloff Fletcher, G. Brailsford, D. Smale, S. Moore, E.D. Keller, W.T. Baisden, H. Mukai and B.B. Stephens, “Atmospheric CO2 observations and models suggest strong carbon uptake by forests in New Zealand”, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, pp. 47–76 (2017) doi:10.5194/acp-17-47-2017

22. H. Lin, “SI-Traceable Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventory Measurement in a Megacity”, National Metrology Institute of China, presented at Countdown to COP26: Measure Up, organized by National Physical Laboratory, UK October 13, 2021

23. Integrated Carbon Observation System: Standardised Greenhouse Gas Measurements throughout Europe, https://www.icos-cp.eu/

24.A. Karion, W. Callahan, M. Stock, et al.,”Greenhouse gas observations from the Northeast Corridor tower network”, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 699–717, 2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-699-2020

25. 20th WMO/IAEA Meeting on Carbon Dioxide, Other Greenhouse Gases and Related Measurement Techniques (GGMT-2019), https://library.wmo.int/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=21758#. YF5IfK9Kg2w

26. World Meteorological Organization (WMO), "Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas Information System," https://ig3is.wmo.int/

27. IG3IS Urban Greenhouse Gas Emission Observation and Monitoring Best Research Practices – Draft for Public Comment, https://ig3is.wmo.int/en/events/ig3is-urban-greenhouse-gas-emission-observationand- monitoring-best-research-practices, 2021

28. WMO - GAW, "Towards an International standard for Urban GHG Monitoring and Assessment," https: //ig3is.wmo.int/en/events/towards-international-standard-urban-ghg-monitoring-and-assessment development-program