The City's Office of Sustainability performs regular monitoring of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from both municipal operations and our community as a whole.  These inventories provide context for how various local activities, like transportation and energy use, emit greenhouse gases that are the leading cause of climate change.  A GHG inventory is a best estimate, and as better data becomes available these datasets are revisited to fine-tune how we measure GHG emissions.  

	Click chart to enlarge

Below you will find materials and reports that give a snapshot of our local emissions. 

If you have general questions about the inventories or about the City's sustainability efforts, please email us (sustainability@knoxvilletn.gov).  If you'd like to learn more about greenhouse gases and their impacts on our planet, we highly recommend NASA's Climate Change web portal. 


About the Inventories
The Office of Sustainability uses a BASIC+ reporting standard (chart at right) for our inventories.  This is a prominent standard in community greenhouse gas reporting.  


Helpful Definitions

Scope 1 - Direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by a reporting entity.  Example: Driving a gasoline car or using a natural gas furnace to heat a building directly emits GHGs because they combust carbon-based fuels.

Scope 2 - Indirect emissions from sources owned or controlled by a reporting entity.  Example: Using grid electricity to turn on a light or charge electronics contributes to indirect emissions because GHGs are emitted during the production of the electricity purchased from the grid - so while your lightbulb doesn't emit GHGs, the power plant that powers the lightbulb does.

Scope 3 - Indirect emissions from the entire value chain of a reporting entity.  Example: When an organization produces waste but disposes of it in a landfill out of the reporting boundary, or when its employees commute to work or travel for conferences, that organization is contributing to indirect

CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) - All greenhouse gases have different 'global warming potential factors' - how much they impact climate.  CO2e is a measurement used to compare different GHGs to one standard unit: carbon dioxide.  CO2e means the number of metric tons of a greenhouse gas with the same global warming potential as one metric ton of carbon dioxide.  For example, methane has a global warming potential factor of 25, so we multiply the amount of methane by 25 to calculate its CO2e.  In the tables below, CO2e is the sum of all measured greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, and N2O) multiplied by their individual global warming potential factors.  For more information on global warming potentials, we recommend EPA's website and FAQ.