Sectoral Guidance for Consistent and Accurate Greenhouse Gas Emission Assessments

With the increased focus on greenhouse gas emissions and diverse policy measures for their mitigation, there continues to be a growing need for accurate, reliable and transparent characterization of these emissions. A myriad of mandatory reporting regulations and voluntary initiatives are emerging in the U.S. and globally with diverse protocols and methodologies. This poses a particular challenge to multinational companies, such as in the Oil & Natural Gas industry sector, which operate globally and in joint ventures with different peer companies. The American Petroleum Institute and its member companies recognized this challenge over a decade ago and responded through a multi-year initiative to develop guidance documents and tools that promote consistent and accurate emission quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, and emission reduction projects. This paper discusses the range of recent activities being undertaken by the industry sector to update its existing methodology compilation and provide new guidelines on emerging issues. The discussion will focus on the recent revision of the methodology compendium; the proposed framework for quantification of emission reduction projects; and technical considerations for addressing key sources of errors that have the largest impacts on the uncertainty of emission assessments. In addition to an overview of these industry documents, the paper emphasizes their application to operations beyond the oil and natural gas industry, i.e., industry sectors that rely on fossil fuels for their energy sources