Inventory Emissions:
We conducted a greenhouse gas inventory to determine the top KBUs to focus our efforts on.We worked with City staff, Duke Energy, and Piedmont Natural Gas to collect energy use data from 2009. We determined emissions by KBU using the Local Government Operations Protocol.
We decided to concentrated on 5 top KBUs: Aviation, Fleet, CATS, Engineering and Property Management, and Utilities. Together, these KBUs represent over 75% of Charlotte’s emissions.
Bottom-up Project Based Approach:
We worked with officials from the top 5 KBUs to determine what greenhouse gas reduction projects they were already working on, what was in the pipeline, and what barriers they saw to implementation. We also proposed numerous project ideas based on research.
These meetings resulted in a list of 250 greenhouse gas reduction projects. We analyzed the energy savings potential of these projects using data from city staff, and calculated the associated greenhouse gas reductions.
Scenario Analysis:
We determined that the key driving forces behind Charlotte’s greenhouse gas target were:
- the amount of effort required by KBU, and
- demonstrational versus operational projects
Using these factors we created the following four scenarios:
- Scenario 1: Demonstration projects, equally distributed by KBU
- Scenario 2:Operational projects, equally distributed by KBU
- Scenario 3: Demonstration projects, unequally distributed by KBU
- Scenario 4: Operational projects, unequally distributed by KBU
We assigned projects under each of the following scenarios, and determined the greenhouse gas reduction potential for each scenario.