Nevada Statewide Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory and Projections, 1990 to 2030
Nevada Statewide Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory and Projections, 1990 to 2030
1.2
Approach, Datasets, and General Methodology
The principal goal of this report is to provide a general understanding of Nevada's historical, current,
and future GHG emissions. In most cases, the approach followed was the one used by the EPA in its
national GHG emission inventory, the EPA's SIT, and those methods suggested in its guidelines for
states. National inventory guidelines are based on the recommendations developed by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6, an international organization responsible for,
among other tasks, coordinating methods for national GHG inventories. The EPA's SIT was used as a
starting point for all inventories and projections; initial estimates were revised when more accurate
state and local datasets became available. The key sources for the data used in this report are listed in
Table 1-3. In gathering the data, and in cases where data sources conflicted, priority was given to local
and state data and analyses, followed by regional and national data. In the absence of available data,
the most appropriate statistical methodology was used to either interpolate or extrapolate the missing
data points. In spite of any possible instance of under/overestimates in emissions estimates related to
using particular datasets, the methods used in this report are considered by NDEP to be the most
reliable available methods at the time this report was produced. The data and methodologies used in
this report are specifically designed to compile a GHG emission inventory at the state level on an annual
time scale; for this reason, the scale of this emission inventory is too coarse to effectively measure and
evaluate the results of most individual GHG reduction programs or statute changes.
For the purpose of this inventory, emissions that were caused by activities that occurred within the
geographical boundaries of the State of Nevada were reported. However, it is important to recognize
that GHG emissions are not always spatially associated with the related activities. For instance,
production (the source of emissions) and consumption of electrical power (the related activity) can take
place at very different locations, sometimes in different states. This distinction is particularly critical in
evaluating the impact of potential demand mitigation strategies. For example, reuse, recycling, and
source reduction can lead to emission reduction from lower energy requirements in material production
(e.g., paper, cardboard, and aluminum) even though the emissions associated with material production
may not occur within that particular state.
5 https://www.epa.gov/statelocalclimate/developing-state-greenhouse-gas-inventory (accessed October 2016).
6 https://www.ipcc.ch/index.htm (accessed October 2016).
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In instances when regional and/or national data are used, the disaggregations can result in under/overestimates
of emissions versus the other states in the original "group". This is due to the methods of redistribution which are
largely comparisons of populations and in some cases gross domestic products (GDPs). Instances where this
uncertainty could lead to an appreciable change in estimated emissions are noted throughout the report.
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