A method for estimating the temporal and spatial patterns of carbon dioxide emissions from national fossil-fuel consumption

Abstract

A proportional methodology is presented for estimating fossil-fuel consumption and concomitant anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. This methodology employs data from representative sectors of the fossil-fuel market to determine the temporal (monthly) and spatial (provincial/state) patterns of fuel consumption. These patterns of fuel consumption are then converted to patterns of CO₂ emissions. The purpose is to provide a procedure for determining anthropogenic emissions from countries where a full accounting of emissions is impracticable due to limited data availability. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proportional methodology, it is applied to data from the United States (U.S.) and the results are compared to those from an independent methodology that employs a thorough accounting of all fuel sectors. Although there are some discrepancies between the two sets of CO₂ emissions estimates, overall, the approaches yield similar results. Thus, the proportional methodology developed here represents a viable method for estimating anthropogenic CO₂ emissions for other countries with limited data availability.