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Carbon monitoring
Carbon monitoring as part of greenhouse gas monitoring is the tracking of how much carbon dioxide or methane is produced by a particular activity at a particular time. For example, it may refer to tracking methane emissions from agriculture, or carbon dioxide emissions from land use changes, such as deforestation, or from burning fossil fuels, whether in a power plant, automobile, or other device. Because carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas emitted in the largest quantities, and methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas, monitoring carbon emissions is widely seen as crucial to any effort to reduce emissions and thereby slow climate change.
Monitoring carbon emissions is key to the cap-and-trade program currently being used in Europe, as well as the one in California, and will be necessary for any such program in the future, like the Paris Agreement. The lack of reliable sources of consistent data on carbon emissions is a significant barrier to efforts to reduce emissions.
Sources of such emissions data include:
Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) – An online database provided by the Center for Global Development, that includes plant-level emissions for more than 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies around the world, as well as the total emissions from power generation of countries, provinces (or states), and localities. Carbon emissions from power generation account for about 25 percent of global CO2 emissions.
ETSWAP – An emissions monitoring and reporting system currently in use in the UK and Ireland, which enables relevant organizations to monitor, verify and report carbon emissions, as is required by the EU ETS (European Union Emissions Trading Scheme).
FMS – A system used in Germany to record and calculate annual emission reports for plant operators subject to the EU ETS.
Carbon emissions are also monitored on a global scale (with data for countries, sectors, companies, activities, etc).
Several organisations provide annual updates to the remaining carbon budget, including the Global Carbon Project, the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) and the CONSTRAIN project. In March 2022, before formal publication of the "Global Carbon Budget 2021" preprint, scientists reported, based on Carbon Monitor (CM) data, that after COVID-19-pandemic-caused record-level declines in 2020, global CO2 emissions rebounded sharply by 4.8% in 2021, indicating that at the current trajectory, the carbon budget for a 2⁄3 likelihood for limiting warming to 1.5 °C would be used up within 9.5 years.
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Carbon monitoring AI simulator
(@Carbon monitoring_simulator)
Carbon monitoring
Carbon monitoring as part of greenhouse gas monitoring is the tracking of how much carbon dioxide or methane is produced by a particular activity at a particular time. For example, it may refer to tracking methane emissions from agriculture, or carbon dioxide emissions from land use changes, such as deforestation, or from burning fossil fuels, whether in a power plant, automobile, or other device. Because carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas emitted in the largest quantities, and methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas, monitoring carbon emissions is widely seen as crucial to any effort to reduce emissions and thereby slow climate change.
Monitoring carbon emissions is key to the cap-and-trade program currently being used in Europe, as well as the one in California, and will be necessary for any such program in the future, like the Paris Agreement. The lack of reliable sources of consistent data on carbon emissions is a significant barrier to efforts to reduce emissions.
Sources of such emissions data include:
Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) – An online database provided by the Center for Global Development, that includes plant-level emissions for more than 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies around the world, as well as the total emissions from power generation of countries, provinces (or states), and localities. Carbon emissions from power generation account for about 25 percent of global CO2 emissions.
ETSWAP – An emissions monitoring and reporting system currently in use in the UK and Ireland, which enables relevant organizations to monitor, verify and report carbon emissions, as is required by the EU ETS (European Union Emissions Trading Scheme).
FMS – A system used in Germany to record and calculate annual emission reports for plant operators subject to the EU ETS.
Carbon emissions are also monitored on a global scale (with data for countries, sectors, companies, activities, etc).
Several organisations provide annual updates to the remaining carbon budget, including the Global Carbon Project, the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) and the CONSTRAIN project. In March 2022, before formal publication of the "Global Carbon Budget 2021" preprint, scientists reported, based on Carbon Monitor (CM) data, that after COVID-19-pandemic-caused record-level declines in 2020, global CO2 emissions rebounded sharply by 4.8% in 2021, indicating that at the current trajectory, the carbon budget for a 2⁄3 likelihood for limiting warming to 1.5 °C would be used up within 9.5 years.