Preparing National Emissions Inventories with US EPA Templates | Global Climate Change

Many countries struggle to prepare these inventories due to a lack of time, technical staff, or resources. A recent paper in the RALI Series explores how the Government of Bangladesh used a tool developed by the US EPA, along with support from USAID, to make significant progress in developing a national greenhouse gas inventory. The US EPA Template Workbook: Developing a National Greenhouse Gas Inventory System offers a start-to-finish structure for preparing a national greenhouse gas inventory. This resource has proven useful to both seasoned inventory experts and new inventory teams with limited experience. The workbook consists of a series of worksheets that walk users through six key inventory topics: institutional arrangements, recordkeeping of GHG estimation methods and data selected, quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC), archiving of inventory inputs and outputs, key category analysis, and inventory improvement planning. Bangladesh submitted its Second National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2012, which included a national greenhouse gas inventory. However, the country's inventory team felt that the inventory could benefit from further improvement. The data and calculations were not sufficiently archived, many of the emission and removal estimates were based on proxy data, and country-specific emission factors were not used. To address these concerns, the Government of Bangladesh assembled a team of personnel from national agencies to work with USAID on inventory development. The team turned to the US EPA workbook for help and participated in focus group discussions to learn the core concepts elaborated within the workbook. Following these discussions, the Government of Bangladesh created a clear organizational chart and statement of work for all sectors, outlined the tasks and responsibilities of each project management unit, and developed a quality assurance and quality control plan for its next inventory. The experience of Bangladesh demonstrates the effectiveness of the US EPA template workbook in helping countries develop robust greenhouse gas inventories. The US EPA template workbook has been used by several South and Southeast Asian nations to train greenhouse gas inventory teams. Mr. Joshua Forgotson of ICF International has provided consulting services to the US EPA, USAID, and other clients implementing climate change mitigation projects. He has trained inventory teams on how to use the US EPA Template Workbook and the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. The US EPA template workbook has proven to be a valuable resource for countries seeking to develop accurate and reliable greenhouse gas inventories.