The primary purpose of research under this theme area is to help improve the accuracy of our estimates of greenhouse gas emissions in Ireland.
The international targets for emissions reductions are based on the national inventory of emissions for each country. It is very important that the estimate of emissions be as accurate as possible, and reflect the conditions leading to emissions and sinks in each country. For this reason, there is on-going research to improve key aspects of the inventory. Figure 1 below shows the sectoral breakdown of greenhouse gas emissions from Ireland in 2008.
Figure 1: Irelands greenhouse gas emissions 2009 by sector (Source: EPA 2011)
The research supports the key EPA statutory function regarding the compilation of the emissions inventory and provision of this information to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the European Union and the general public. The inventory process is as open and rigorous as possible, meeting the highest scientific standards, and aims to reflect conditions in Ireland.
The challenge in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the wide variety of sources, across all sectors of the economy and reaching into almost every aspect of our daily lives. It was agreed at an early stage of the international process that quantification of emissions was key to identifying the solution to reducing emissions. Every country has a different profile of activities, each of which can be targeted in different ways, to achieve the goal of stabilisation of global climate through the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.
At this stage, most of the key emission sources relevant to Ireland are well documented, especially those related to fossil fuel combustion in the Energy, Transport and Industrial sectors. These sources account for up to 60% of total emissions in Ireland. Another 11% of emissions are related to the Residential Sector and up to 2% from Waste Management. Agriculture and Land Use, Land Change and Forestry (LULUCF) account for the remaining 27% of emissions. .However, large uncertainty exists in the estimates of emissions in these key sectors and this is the current focus of research, especially in Agriculture and Land Use.
Greenhouse gas emissions due to Agriculture account for approximately 27% of total emissions. Relative to other developed countries, this is a very high figure and reflects the importance of Agriculture in the Ireland.
However, agriculture and its impact on land management may also represent an opportunity for increasing the removal of carbon from the atmosphere to biomass and other biological systems, and medium to long term storage of the carbon within organic matter, such as woody material or soil. This is known as carbon sequestration. Recent research indicates that sequestration of carbon to soil due to on-going farming practices may be an offset for some of the other emissions associated with agricultural systems. Continued monitoring and research is the key to bringing these findings into the inventory process, and providing a means to achieve complete and appropriate representation of all activities in the estimates.
It is very important that we are able to put real, robust figures to the various options to reduce greenhouse emissions, and other proposals to increase the sinks of carbon. The golden rule is “if it can’t be quantified, it can’t be used”. There is no advantage to the country in promoting emissions reduction strategies which do not, or cannot be included in the inventory or perhaps traded on voluntary carbon markets.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas produced from the slow decay of organic waste material dumped in the warm, humid and oxygen poor (anaerobic) conditions within landfill sites. Modern waste management techniques reduce the emissions to atmosphere from landfills through capture and flaring or utilization systems. There is considerable uncertainty as regards the ultimate quantity of methane which is released to the atmosphere from Irish landfill sites. A recent study suggests that recent development in improved landfill management in Ireland have significantly improved our profile of landfill emissions.
The estimation of emissions from various sources of statistical and economy activity data is essentially a modelling exercise. We estimate the emissions of greenhouse gas emissions from cars from the number of cars, quantity of fuel sold, etc.. The relationship between activity data and greenhouse gas release is called the emission factor. The emission factor may not be true for an individual car, animal or landfill, but it is typical of the average case. The more sophisticated the model used to estimate emissions, the more accurately it will reflect the real world situation. However, usually the more sophisticated the model the more difficult it is to get good activity data, the more special cases needed to be considered and the more resources are required to do the calculation. Therefore a compromise is required, which balances the resources required and the benefits of knowing the emissions to this higher level of accuracy. The simplest inventory approach is to use the default methodologies detailed in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Good Practice Guidance documents (http://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/index.html). These models require basic national statistical information from which to build an estimate, the so called Tier 1 method. The estimate is crude, but may be all that is required for a minor emission source. The more important the emission source, in a given country, the greater the emphasis placed on accurate estimation of source strength. To this end, countries are encouraged to develop more refined emission factors, and a more detailed breakdown of activities. The basic model would be similar to the IPCC model as one moves to these Tier 2 methods. Finally, Tier 3 methodology involves a country specific model, which is fine tuned to local conditions. The aim of the Climate Change Research Programme is to progress to Tier 2 and Tier 3 methodologies for the key sources in the Irish emissions profile.
The EPA hosted a national workshop on modelling efforts for greenhouse gas accounting in Irish agriculture and land use change on Wednesday 24th November 2010 at its offices in Dublin.
Objectives for this workshop were:
You can find the presentations from this workshop on the EPA's SlideShare page. For further information please contact Dr. M. Ibrahim Khalil - E-mail: i.khalil@epa.ie; Tel: +353 (0)53 9160600
Another aspect of this research theme is called Verification of emission estimates. As part of the provisions of the UNFCCC, it is not enough to simply report emissions based on various statistical data and models, such as car numbers, fuel consumption and animal numbers. There is a requirement to provide independent observation and analysis which confirm the National Inventory estimates.
The EPA has linked, with a number of other European countries, to a major research infrastructure programme called the Integrated Carbon Observing System, ICOS. The aim of ICOS is to provide the core observation data required to perform exactly this independent verification analysis. If significant differences emerge between the Inventory and the Verification it will point to areas of the Inventory which need additional improvement.
Restored peatland for carbon sequestrations
www.ucd.ie/bogland
Compressed biomethane generated from grass, utilised as a transport biofuel
www.ucc.ie/serg
GHG fluxes from terrestrial ecosystems - Data maintenance at three sites - Integrated Data Analysis Model Development
www.ucc.ie/hydromet/active
Integrated Carbon Observation Systems (ICOS)
http://www.icos-infrastructure.eu/
Check out the latest climate change reports from the EPA
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
http://www.ipcc.ch/
Emissions projections
Emissions inventories
