CityCarbon User Guide

1About the tool

CityCarbon prepares a municipality’s community-scale greenhouse gas inventory under the GPC and connects it to the SECAP action plan. It is built for municipal climate teams, consultants and Covenant of Mayors signatories.

2Quick start

1. 1

   Complete the city profile

   City name, inventory year, scale (metropolitan, province, district, institution), population, area, GWP set and reporting level (BASIC or BASIC+).

2. 2

   Enter stationary energy and transport

   Enter fuel use by sub-sector; each fuel is calculated with the selected GWP set.

3. 3

   Enter electricity and heat

   Grid electricity and purchased heat by sub-sector.

4. 4

   Enter waste

   Disposal, biological treatment, incineration and wastewater; where the waste is treated matters.

5. 5

   Mark the remaining rows

   Mark rows without data with the right notation key (NO, NE, IE, C); an empty row counts as not reported.

6. 6

   Check and report

   Self-Verification lists the gaps; Excel, PDF and Word reports are produced from the Results page.

3City profile and boundary

The profile holds the inventory year, geographic boundary, population, area and GDP, and feeds the per-capita, per-area and per-GDP indicators. Changing the GWP set (AR4, AR5, AR6) recalculates every sector.

4GPC structure: BASIC and BASIC+

• BASIC covers the Scope 1 and 2 rows of stationary energy and transportation, the Scope 1 rows of waste and the treatment of the city’s waste outside the boundary (Scope 3). BASIC+ adds transmission and distribution losses, transboundary transport, fugitive emissions, IPPU and AFOLU.
• Each row takes a value in one of two ways: activity data × emission factor (the line calculator offers DEFRA travel, freight and vehicle factors) or a pre-calculated direct emission.
• Waste rows are calculated by their own engine; the same factor is not offered again in the line calculator, to avoid double counting.

5Stationary energy and transportation

The activity calculator turns fuel use into emissions in 11 sub-sectors (GPC I.1–I.6 and II.1–II.5). The CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O components of the fuel library are kept apart and recombined with the GWP set chosen in the city profile, so a GWP change carries through every sector.

6Waste

• Four streams: solid waste disposal (III.1), biological treatment (III.2), incineration and open burning (III.3), wastewater treatment and discharge (III.4).
• Waste treated inside the city boundary is reported as Scope 1, waste treated outside it as Scope 3. A city that sends its waste to a landfill in a neighbouring region has not exported the emissions.
• Landfill uses one of two methods: methane commitment (Tier 1; the lifetime methane of the waste landfilled that year) or first-order decay (FOD, Tier 2; the methane actually released in the inventory year). The method used is declared in the report.
• FOD needs at least 10, preferably 50, years of disposal history; missing early years can be back-cast. Climate zone: Temperate — dry, Temperate — wet, Tropical — dry, Tropical — wet.
• Waste composition and per-capita BOD/protein come from a regional profile (11 regions). These are indicative values; enter measured composition where you have it.

7Electricity and heat (Scope 2)

• Grid electricity and purchased heat in 11 sub-sectors.
• Method: Location-based, Residual mix, Custom factor (local EFE).
• 4 default factors for purchased heat, or the supplier’s factor.
• Scope 2 is often the largest single item in a city inventory and is required for GPC BASIC and the SECAP baseline emission inventory. Transmission and distribution losses are reported under BASIC+ as Scope 3.

8BASIC+ sectors

• IPPU (GPC IV): calculators for processes such as cement clinker, ammonia and urea, and for fluorinated gas use.
• AFOLU (GPC V): livestock, land and aggregate non-land sources.
• Other Scope 3 (GPC VI): other indirect emissions occurring outside the city (optional).
• Fugitive emissions (I.7–I.8): methane from coal mining and from oil and natural gas systems.

9SECAP: strategy, split, actions and adaptation

• Strategy declarations: political commitment, organisation, staff and budget. They do not touch the inventory or the scenario.
• Municipal / community split: the municipality’s own operations are reported in a separate column (Municipal buildings, equipment and facilities; Public lighting; Water and wastewater facilities (municipal operation); Municipal fleet; Public transport; Municipal waste services and facilities). Each line states its basis: Measured, Scaled, Estimated.
• Action registry: mitigation actions across 9 sectors and 7 action areas, with status and owner. Actions the engine can calculate are linked to it, so the same action is never reported with two different figures.
• Climate risk and adaptation: risk, expected change and timeframe for 11 hazard types; adaptation actions in 13 sectors. Adaptation declarations never affect emission totals.
• Adaptation scoreboard: A–D maturity declaration across the steps of the adaptation cycle (5 headings, 21 items).
• Energy poverty: baseline year, current level and target for 24 indicators in 6 macro areas (Climate, Socio-economic, Facilities / housing, Mobility, Political and regulatory framework, Participation / awareness-raising).
• Covenant of Mayors registration: signatory details and initiatives joined; export in the MyCovenant template order.

10Data quality and self-verification

The GPC does not count a row as reported on the number alone: it also needs a data source, a data-quality rating and a method tier (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3). The GPC Matrix keeps this metadata row by row; Self-Verification lists missing or inconsistent rows and takes you from each finding to the row.

11Trend, targets and mitigation scenario

• Multi-year series: each inventory year is stored as a snapshot; the base year and the target path are tracked against it.
• Base-year recalculation triggers: City boundary change, Methodology change, GWP set change, Data error correction, Structural change (transfer of operations). Default significance threshold 5%.
• Mitigation scenario: Rooftop solar PV on municipal buildings; LED streetlight conversion; Municipal bus fleet conversion to CNG/electric; Building energy efficiency and insulation; Landfill gas flaring / power generation. The avoided emissions of each action are calculated from engineering parameters, and the business-as-usual scenario is compared with the action-plan scenario.
• The report separates the city’s emission change into the effect of local action and the effect of the national grid decarbonising, so a city that did nothing does not show the grid’s improvement as its own.

12Reports and outputs

The workbook is stored in the cloud; the file menu creates, opens, renames and imports files.

13Troubleshooting

14Glossary

15References

• GPC — Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories (WRI, C40, ICLEI).
• 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, Volume 5 (Waste).
• Covenant of Mayors – Europe SECAP reporting template and guidebook.
• GCoM Common Reporting Framework (CRF).

Revision history