Hello,
I am trying to get CO2 emissions by sector for Georgia in 2017. I am using the data queries since 2017 is an “NEI year.” The link: 2017 National Emissions Inventory (NEI) Data | US EPA. The values for electric generation are way off. The total electric generation from the querie was 1.13e+04 tons. However, the actual value should be somewhere around 4.2e+07 tons ghgdata epa.
The CO2 emissions for the electric generation are far less than other sectors such as onroad, non-road equipment, and industry related emissions. This pattern is consistent even for 2022 NEI input files. I would like to know why CO2 emissions from electric generation is too low in the NEI Data Queries and the input files.
Any help is much appreciated!
Best,
Kruthika
.
The GHGs reported within the NEI database are not complete for all sectors, and as your question identifies, the point source portion of the GHGs in the NEI while complete is not assigned to sectors appropriately. The NEI values for the point source data category are almost entirely from the facility-level aggregate totals posted by the EPA’s GHG Reporting Program. Those facility-total only data are loaded into the NEI to stand alongside the criteria and HAP air pollutants that the NEI is designed for. While the criteria and HAP pollutants are mostly reported by State air agencies at process-level detail (with a process description attribute that allows us to put those emissions into the sectors that we built for the NEI, for criteria and HAP emissions), the GHG Reporting Program values at facility-level aggregate do not have that process description attribute. GHG emissions by sector (defined for GHG purposes) would be best obtained from the EPA’s authoritative source for those pollutants at https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/inventoryexplorer/
Thank you for the clarification.