A Sub-category Disaggregated Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventory for the Bogota Region, Colombia
Abstract
Several international organizations, such as UNDP and UNEP, have recently recognized the importance of empowering sub-national decision levels on climatic governance according to the subsidiarity principle. Regional and municipal authorities are directly responsible for land use management and for regulating economic sectors that emit greenhouse gases (GHG) and are vulnerable to climate change. Sub-national authorities are also closer to the population, which make them better suited for educating the public and for achieving commitment among stakeholders. This investigation was developed within the frame of the Regional Integrated Program on Climate Change for the Cundinamarca-Bogota Region (PRICC), an initiative aimed at incorporating the climate dimension into the regional and local decision making. The region composed by Bogota and its nearest, semi-rural area of influence (Province of Cundinamarca) is the most important population and economic center of Colombia. Our investigation serves two purposes: a) to establish methodologies for estimating regional GHG emissions appropriate to the Colombian context, and b) to disaggregate GHG emissions by economic sector as a mitigation decision-making tool. GHG emissions were calculated using IPCC 1996 - Tier 1 methodologies, as there are no regional- or country-specific emission factors available for Colombia. Top-Down (TD) methodologies, based on national and regional energy use intensity, per capita consumption and fertilizer use, were developed and applied to estimate activities for following categories: fuel use in industrial, commercial and residential sectors (excepting NG and LPG), use of ozone depleting substances (ODS) and substitutes, and fertilizer use (for total emissions of agricultural soils). The emissions from the remaining 22 categories were calculated using Bottom-Up (BU) methodologies given the availability of regional information. The total GHG emissions in the Cundinamarca-Bogota Region on 2008 are estimated at 22.96±1.25 (1-sigma) Tg of CO2 equivalent (10.46±0.93 Tg CO2-e from Cundinamarca and 12.51±0.83 Tg CO2-eq from Bogota). 63% of Cundinamarca's GHG emissions are due to road transportation, agricultural soil management, enteric fermentation and fuel use in the cement industry. The road transportation and waste disposal sectors share 62% of emissions in Bogota. These activity sectors are considered to be the main GHG mitigation assessment targets. The calculated per capita emissions, 1.7 ton CO2-eq/hab-year for Bogota and 4.4 ton CO2-eq/hab-year for Cundinamarca (excluding emissions due to land-use change), do not reflect the fact that Cundinamarca provides goods and services to the city of Bogota. A deeper analysis is thus required to quantitatively account for Bogota's urban metabolism, including GHG emissions associated with consumption patterns. It is expected that the developed and applied methodologies, and the systematic compilation of the gathered information, will facilitate the development of GHG inventories for other regions of Colombia.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.A11F0115P
- Keywords:
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- 0322 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE / Constituent sources and sinks;
- 0345 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE / Pollution: urban and regional;
- 1610 GLOBAL CHANGE / Atmosphere