Climate and Energy Action Plan (CEAP)

City of Ashland – Greenhouse Gas Inventory (2011 – 2015) 11 and activities and groups emissions into like categories such as built environment, transportation, etc. This is a departure from the Scope categories used in Operational GHG Protocol, described in Section 3 of this report. The reason for this inconsistency between protocols is that community emissions often cross politically defined geographic boundaries and therefore do not fit neatly into Scope classifications based on operational control. Examples of this include transportation, solid waste landfill disposal, and wastewater treatment emissions. Figure 7 provides a summary of the emissions sources and activities included in this inventory and a crosswalk to categorize emissions into Scope categories. Those emissions sources or activities that cross inventory boundaries are those that are applicable to multiple Scope categories in Figure 7. For example, emissions from on-road transportation are considered Scope 1 for emissions within the community boundary, while emissions that happen outside of the community boundary are considered Scope 3. Exclusions from the Community Inventory • Consumption-based emissions for local businesses. Like households, businesses consume materials and, in the case of restaurants, food in order to serve their customers. Those emissions are not accounted for in this inventory due to a lack of available data from which to estimate emissions. Data Collection Good Company worked with Adam Hanks, Project Manager for the City of Ashland to collect the data required to calculate emissions. Primary data collection for the 2011 - 2015 inventories was completed in September 2015 through January of 2016. Primary, accurate data is available for the Ashland Community’s use of electricity, natural gas, gasoline, and landfilled solid waste quantities. Primary data for all other emissions sources included in the community inventory required either scaling down state-level data or using Jackson County-level data within models to estimate primary data per protocol guidance. See Appendix B for more details. Two data models were used in the course of Ashland’s community inventory to estimate primary data using methods and guidance provided in ICLEI’s Community GHG Protocol. These include: Oregon Department of Transportation’s (ODOT) Regional Strategic Planning Model and Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s (ODEQ) Oregon Household Carbon Calculator. The ODOT model is used to estimate on-road passenger and freight transport vehicle-miles traveled and associated GHG emissions. ODOT model results are compared to alternative data sources and emissions calculator methodology. ODEQ’s Oregon Carbon Calculator was used to estimate household consumption-based emissions for the Ashland community. Emissions Calculations and Uncertainty As the previous discussion makes clear, there is some degree of uncertainty in Ashland’s community inventory results. This uncertainty comes from a variety of sources including lack of publically available data sources or other data issues, but uncertainty can also stem from the calculation methodology or emissions factors used to calculate emissions from activity data. The relative scale of uncertainty can be used to inform the reading of the results. It can also helpful in planning the approach to future inventory