Comparative analysis of carbon dioxide emission factors for energy industries in European Union countries

Strategies for mitigating climate change require accurate estimates of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Estimates of the amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHGs emitted into the atmosphere are crucial for planning and analyzing mitigation efforts. Emissions factors are the fundamental tool in developing national emissions inventories. The quality of GHG inventories has been a long-standing issue among the scientific community and its importance has more recently risen on the policy agenda because national inventories are now the basis of legally-binding commitments. According to the IPCC Good Practice Guidance comparison with the recommended IPCC default values may be informative in establishing the comparability of the country-specificity of the emission factors used. Such comparison may help to identify data outlier where uncertainty ranges do not overlap. The main objective of this article is to assess comparability of CO2 emissions factors between EU countries for energy industries and to evaluate whether the reporting of emissions from energy industries is good enough to monitor progress towards the emission reduction targets set under international agreements according to the quality criteria of transparency, consistency, comparability, completeness and accuracy. Performed analysis of CO2 emission factors showed that almost all EU countries seeking to reduce uncertainty apply country-specific CO2 emission factors for major sources of emissions from energy industries. Application of country-specific emission factors ensures greater accuracy and lower uncertainty of GHG inventory. Comparative analysis showed that country-specific CO2 emission factors applied in EU countries for the main fuels combusted in the energy industries have been established in a comparable way taking into account uncertainty ranges defined in the IPCC Guidelines. Seeking to ensure more accurate estimates of CO2 emissions it is important further improve knowledge on emission factors at individual plant level that allow estimating GHG emissions with lower uncertainty applying higher level tier methods.