Common Carbon Metricfor Measuring Energy Use & Reporting Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Building Operations

A tool developed by GHG Protocol and UNEP-SBCI

Typical Emissions from Buildings

Boundaries and Emissions sources

- emissions for water supply,

waste treatment, etc

- emissions embedded in

purchased products

Fixed energy sources – power, heating, cooling

- Mobile emissions

sources- e.g., vehicles in

building service- Release of GHG from equipment- Any treatment of waste on site

Boundary depends on the objectives

Introduction • Focus of Protocol on emissions during accounting phase/operational phase.

• It accounts for ~80% of life cycle emissions from buildings.

• Developed with inputs from building rating agencies, government institutions, experts, research institutes, private sectors, etc.

• Main sources of emissions:– Lighting, – Heating/cooling– Appliances

• Option for capturing indirect sources too.

Objectives of the Protocol• Develop common metrics for use in gathering consistent data

and reporting climate performance of existing buildings in order to:– policy making on addressing emissions;– to support measurement for NAMAs, carbon crediting mechanisms and

plans;– MRV system to help track and report GHG emissions from building

sector.

• Designed through a modular approach, with the intention to add further calculation functionalities relating to additional emission sources, different phases of a building’s existence, upstream/ downstream emissions, etc.

• Protocol provides excel sheet model which provides ready made templates for estimating emissions.

• Available at www.unep.org/sbci/resources/Publications.asp

Basics of Estimation

Indicators

Other sources• CDM – Executive Board has approved following

methodologies for building projects/programmes:– AM0091: Energy efficiency technologies and fuel switching in new

buildings;– AMS-II.E: Energy efficiency and fuel switching measures for buildings;– AMS-II.Q: Energy efficiency and/or energy supply projects

in commercial buildings; and, – AMS-II.R : Energy efficiency space heating measures for residential

buildings.

• CDM –EB is developing tool for measurement of building energy/emission estimations – one step to standardization.

• The approach uses modelling based methods to capture design based efficiency improvements in buildings.

Metrices used

• Energy Intensity = kWh/m2/year (kilo Watt hours per square meter per year or per occupant per year)

• Carbon Intensity = kgCO2e/m2/year or kgCO2e/o/year (kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per square meter or per occupant per year)

8

Approach

• Bottom-up: Producing a GHG inventory and performance metrics for individual buildings

• Top-down: Producing a GHG inventory for a defined group of buildings defined as ‘whole’. The whole may be a set of buildings, a city, a province or a nation.

• Monitoring carbon mitigation measures on a regional or national scale would require a top-down approach while assessing individual building projects would require a bottom-up approach

9

Why CCM?

CCM is intended to be globally harmonized method for MRV energy use

and GHG emissions, provides the basis for establishing baselines,

performance benchmarking, and monitoring building performance improvements

Important for international mechanisms for carbon trading, policy development and analysis, and progress reporting on the mitigation of GHG emissions from buildings

TERI’s contribution

• Provided annual energy consumption data for 3 non-residential buildings in different locations and climatic regions of the country

• Contributed to testing of the toolkit and customizing various fields

• Based on CCM and other metrices, a simplified metric developed for data collation to estimate energy consumption, GHG emissions, etc. to arrive at baselines, benchmarking, monitoring, policy guidance etc.

Challenges for most of the countries

• Non availability of data at macro/micro levels• Data inconsistency• Is it really necessary to be very precise about data?• Feedback from participant countries on the

proposed excel based data collection tool and need for further simplification

• How to move forward?

Reverse Innovation

Few experiences from India• Absence of built-up area for Residential and/or

commercial sectors

Area of Dwelling Unit in Sqm

Rural Areas Urban Areas

% %

< 10 2.20% 4.60%

10-14 6.30% 8.50%

15-19 9.50% 8.40%

20-24 11.70% 10.10%

25-29 8.50% 7.80%

30-39 16.90% 14.50%

40-54 18.40% 16.60%

55-69 9.40% 9.90%

70-89 8.10% 8.50%

90-119 4.20% 5.90%

120+ 4.40% 5.10%

Distribution of Households by covered area of dwelling units (Source: NSSO 2006-07)

• By multiplying the area of dwelling units by the number of households, area of dwelling units has been derived.

• Area of Urban Dwelling Units= 3521 Million sqm• Area of Rural Dwelling Units= 7421 Million sqm • Total Area of Dwellings Units in India = 10,942

Million sqm

Estimates for projected growth in commercial sector• Census data on population growth trends, demand

for new commercial spaces (except large malls, retail stores, BPOs, etc.) can be easily used to arrive at estimates for growth in sub-sectors

In case all Emission Factors are not available• 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National GHG inventories

may be referred for default values

In case appliances data and efficiencies are not available• For appliances, sales data/efficiency data from

manufacturers/associations– Sample study on consumption pattern, operational

schedule, etc. for various sub-sectors (depending on a country’s priority)

Key takeaways• A large body of work exists for developing methodologies to

estimate GHG emissions from buildings;• Approaches available, both, for tracking changes in emissions

over time as well as for carbon offset mechanisms – setting baseline indicators and measurement during implementation;

• In most situations most of the data required is not difficult to measure as it is related to commercial services, as such can be tracked through bills and metering;

• The challenge is of developing sustainable systems for measurements for continuous monitoring– data collection and management systems as well as responsibilities;– legal frameworks to develop continuous measurements.

CCM 2.0

• 3CSEP-HEB and CCM 1.0• Simplified tool• Future scenarios for better policy making

Thank You

Dr. Hina ZiaFellowThe Energy & Resources Institutehzia@teri.res.in