Related GHG Emissions Research Articles

Uncertainty in estimating and mitigating industrial related GHG emissions

Global climate change has been one of the challenging environmental concerns facing policy makers in the past decade. The characterization of the wide range of greenhouse gas emissions sources and sinks as well as their behavior in the atmosphere remains an on-going activity in many countries. Lebanon, being a signatory to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, is required to submit and regularly update a national inventory of greenhouse gas emissions sources and removals. Accordingly, an inventory of greenhouse gases from various sectors was conducted following the guidelines set by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The inventory indicated that the industrial sector contributes about 29 percent to the total greenhouse gas emissions divided between industrial processes and energy requirements at 12 and 17 percent, respectively. This paper describes major mitigation scenarios to reduce emissions from this sector based on associated technical, economic, environmental, and social characteristics. Economic ranking of these scenarios was conducted and uncertainty in emission factors used in the estimation process was emphasized. For this purpose, theoretical and experimental emission factors were used as alternatives to default factors recommended by the IPCC and the significance of resulting deviations in emission estimation is presented.

Estimating Some Social and Environmental Effects from Rail/Road Substitution in the Trans-European Transport Corridors

This paper deals with estimating possible effects in terms of mitigating the social and environmental impacts which could be achieved by operating the rail freight train instead of the road truck services in the given Trans-European transport corridor during the specified period of time. In general, these impacts embrace noise, congestion, traffic incidents/accidents (Safety), and energy consumption and related GHG emissions (Greenhouse Gases). Each type of impact, specific to particular mode, is analyzed and modeled, thus enabling its quantitative estimation and intermodal comparison under the given circumstances. In particular, energy consumption and related GHG emissions and their costs have been under focus. The total costs of the above-mentioned impacts in the given case have also been estimated. Thus, they both represent a solid base for the assessment of the social-environmental feasibility of the future similar cases.