City of Ashland – Greenhouse Gas Inventory (2011 – 2015) 23 Good Company worked primarily with Adam Hanks, Project Manager for the City of Ashland, to collect the data required to calculate operational emissions for FY2011-2015. Good Company provided the City with a data collection checklist that specified data types and units. The City’s Project Manager used the checklist to either directly supply data or coordinate data collection efforts among the appropriate City staff. After the receipt of an individual data file, Good Company reviewed it for completeness and asked follow-up questions if necessary. All data source files, answers to follow-up questions, resulting calculation files, and related resource files are documented and cataloged an Audit Trail for each inventory year. For more details see Appendix C. In general, data was available and comprehensive. The two exceptions, a portion of the natural gas data and refrigerant emissions from buildings, were noted in the previous section. Of these the priority should be to collect the outstanding natural gas data. Refrigerant emissions are relatively small for most City governments and other organizations. Emissions Calculations and Uncertainty There is some degree of uncertainty in any GHG inventory. This uncertainty can come from incomplete data, but it can also result from uncertainty in the methodology or factors used in translating units of activity (e.g. gallon of gasoline, kilowatt-hour of electricity, short ton of solid waste) into CO2-equivalent emissions. The sources of uncertainty should inform future inventory and reporting efforts, including prioritization of additional data gathering, framing inventory results, and in the development of mitigation goals and tracking systems. Figure 19 provides a subjective assessment of this uncertainty, by emissions source. Later sections of the report provide additional detail, but the general points are straightforward: • Stationary and mobile combustion have low uncertainty. Both sources are supported by good data and the methods for quantifying emissions from them are well-defined and accepted. • Purchased electricity, the second-largest emissions source, has well-defined and well-known units of activity (kWh of electricity consumed) but significant year-over-year changes in emissions factors (from changes in available renewable electricity) combined with a 3-year lag in the availability of emissions factors creates “real-time” uncertainty. Emissions calculations will be more accurate as this data becomes available. • Several emissions sources are low to moderate in magnitude and have some uncertainty with their data and methods. These include fugitive refrigerants, air travel, employee commute, and solid waste. • Supply chain is the source of the largest emissions and uncertainty. The high degree of uncertainty related to supply chain emissions, and consumption-based emissions calculations in general, is that calculation of these emissions require models to

Climate and Energy Action Plan (CEAP)