Evaluation of the Global Protocol for Community Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) Method for Chinese Cities
China has become the largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the world. Urban areas only cover a small area, but contribute a large amount of the GHG emission. Along with the rapid urbanization in China, research on the urban GHG inventory has received significant attention from scholars. The Global Protocol for Community Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) Method was developed to explore appropriate methods to measure city GHG and assist cities in improving GHG accounting capabilities, and provide decision making support to urban low carbon development, based on the international common GHG inventory methods. The previous studies show the Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC method) and ICLEI Protocol do not apply to cities in China as well. At present, China lacks a unified standard, guidance or tool for city GHG accounting (GPC, 2014) This paper presents a detailed analysis of GHG inventory for Chinese cities, aims to review the applicability of GPC method for accounting the GHG emission inventory of Chinese Cities. The selected case city, Beijing, was accounted for the urban GHG inventories in 2014 to evaluate the GPC method complete and applicable for Chinese Cities, through the activity data collection from the public source. Almost all the GHG emission of energy sector can be accounted based on the GPC method. However, the other sectors, including the industry, agriculture, waste, and forestry and land use change sectors also face the problem and difficulty, related to a lack of local activity data in Chinese cities. The GPC method provides a robust and clear framework that builds on existing methodologies for calculating and reporting urban GHG inventory. This is also a useful tool to understand and profile GHG emissions for Chinese cities, and design tailored and targeted emission factor and few kind of the activity data for GHG inventory account.