Clean Energy
Community Greenhouse Gas Inventories
Greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories are essential to informing any climate action plan. An inventory allows you to identify and target the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in your community and provides a baseline to measure the impact of future climate mitigation programs.
A GHG inventory quantifies the emissions released from a defined geographic area (e.g city, town, state etc.) during a given year. The data provides a local understanding of how residents, businesses, and municipal operations contribute to a community’s carbon footprint. Developing a comprehensive GHG inventory of your city or town can be a challenging task, so MAPC has developed resources and tools to streamline this process for your community and provide support along the way.
FROM 101 to NET ZERO
Questions?
For more information about Net Zero Planning and using the MAPC Community Greenhouse Gas Inventory tool, contact: [email protected].
Build your GHG Inventory with Mapc
Communities can use MAPC’s Community Greenhouse Gas Inventory Tool to develop their own local inventories. MAPC developed an accompanying Step-by-Step Guide to Greenhouse Gas Inventories for Massachusetts Cities and Towns to support communities through the data collection process and best practices for developing a GHG inventory. Both of these resources will help you to account for a variety of emissions resulting for activities taking place within your City or Town. This includes emissions from stationary energy transportation, and waste disposal sectors.
Access Data for Your GHG Inventory
Learn How To Use MAPC's Tool
Our Clean Energy Department is available to support local staff and volunteers in understanding how to use these new resources to develop their own GHG inventory. On June 25, 2020, MAPC and DNV GL Energy Insights hosted a virtual training on MAPC's Community GHG Inventory Tool and Step-by-Step Guide. Listen to the webinar recording to get to know the basics of GHG inventories, hear from the Town of Arlington on local best practices, and undertake a deep dive on data collection for each sector.
Watch Recording | Download Slides
MAPC's Community GHG Inventory tool
MAPC's Community GHG Inventory Tool will allow cities and towns to develop their own GHG inventories for their community. After answering a series of questions about the towns emission’s throughout the year, the tool will compile the year’s data into a comprehensive GHG inventory for the community’s use.
Download the Tool (V4.2 - April 7, 2021)
MAPC's Step-by-Step Guide
We recommend the user reviews our Step-by-Step GHG Inventory Guide to get the most out of this tool. This guide will support the community throughout the data collection process, will provide guidance to fill data gaps where information is not readily available, and teach you how to track your communities emissions over time.
Have questions, feedback, or encounter an issue?
Ask us questions, provide feedback, or report any issues that you have encountered while using the tool using this form.
More GHG Inventory Resources
ICLEI ClearPath Tool – An online software platform to complete greenhouse gas inventories and climate action plans at both the community and government scale
EPA Local Greenhouse Gas Inventory Tool – EPA’s Local Greenhouse Gas Inventory Tool was developed to help communities across the US evaluate their greenhouse gas emissions. This tool can compile a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory for your community or for local government operations.
Massachusetts State Greenhouse Gas Inventory – MassDEP's annual updates to the state's greenhouse gas emissions profile and progress on reductions by sector.