Standardizing Greenhouse Gas Inventory Outputs for Decision-Making

Community Lead

Atlanta, Georgia

This project was beneficial to the City of Atlanta since it helped them get back on track with doing more regular greenhouse gas emissions inventories. By having this resource and being able to make it publicly available and internally available will help them to focus on certain programming. Mitigating climate change in the City of Atlanta, especially how it relates to emissions from commercial buildings were assumed not to have any impacts. So this has helped to dispel a lot of notions as to what the effects of emissions are for the city.

Learn More

The challenge

Understand Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions

To develop a comprehensive written report on the City of Atlanta’s greenhouse gas inventories that can provide analysis of the data to be used to support policy decisions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as to provide updates to the public on the status of the City in working to achieve its emissions reductions targets.

The Results

An actionable inventory

Through this project, Saikawa and her student developed a greenhouse gas inventory summary sheet for the City of Atlanta.

This project was beneficial to the City of Atlanta since it helped them get back on track with doing more regular greenhouse gas emissions inventories. By having this resource and being able to make it publicly available and internally available will help them to focus on certain programming. Mitigating climate change in the City of Atlanta, especially how it relates to emissions from commercial buildings were assumed not to have any impacts. So this has helped to dispel a lot of notions as to what the effects of emissions are for the city.

Saikawa found the involvement of herself and her student highly useful for her research and teaching since she used this dataset in her class. One of her students developed a video as to how Atlanta could reduce emissions, perhaps another useful tool for the city. For students, Saikawa says that being involved in such community science projects as this “…is a great exercise to see the data and potential scenarios to how to mitigate [climate change]. [It is]…great to have the data and see real solutions.”

Saikawa says that she would be happy to share the work. She is interested in exploring a common and easily replicable format with Thriving Earth and other cities that have or might be interested in doing greenhouse gas inventories. Specifically, it could be a very nice way for students to be involved from different parts of the country in a similar manner. For instance, when she went to UN climate negotiations, they had a project through Zoom for students to join in.

O’Neil concurs that it would be the type of project that might be scalable through another university and local partnership. City of Atlanta is much better equipped than the greater Atlanta region, so there is an opportunity to share further.

Project Team

Megan O’Neil

Community Lead

Megan O’Neil is the Energy Programs Manager for the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Resilience, focusing on the development and implementation of clean every policies in the Southeast’s leading city for sustainability, most directly through my leadership in Atlanta’s 100% Clean Energy Plan.

Eri Saikawa

Eri Saikawa is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences at Emory University. She received a Bachelor of Engineering in chemistry and biotechnology at the University of Tokyo, Master of Public Affairs with a concentration in environmental policy and natural resource management at Indiana University, Bloomington, and a Ph.D. from the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy program at Princeton University. She was a Postdoctoral Associate and a Research Scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology before she joined Emory University in 2013. Her research is focused on analyzing sources and magnitude of emissions linked to air pollution, ozone depletion, and climate change, as well as the impacts of these emissions on humans and society.