GHG Emissions Sources

Definition

GHG Emissions Sources are any identifiable physical artefacts that at any time during their lifecycle act as emitters of green house gas, that is they release into the Earth's atmosphere any of the seven gases mandated under the Kyoto Protocol and to be included in national inventories under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Physically, GHG Emissions may be produced due to:

• current ongoing chemical processes that occur while in contact with the atmosphere (combustion, chemical processing) or
• through leaks of previously generated gases from their containers.

In turn the main chemical processes can be classified as either

• combustion, where the primary aim is energy generation
• process emissions, where the primary aim is some chemical or mechanical process

In turn combustion can be classified as either:

• stationary, where the combustion process takes place in a stationary facility
• mobile, where combustion happens in mobile facility (in the context of transport)

GHG Emissions Sources Taxonomy

The above emissions modelities are forming the GHG Emissions taxonomy. The GHG Protocol identifies the following high level categories:

• Stationary Combustion: combustion of fuels in stationary equipment such as boilers, furnaces, burners, turbines, heaters, incinerators, engines, flares, etc.
• Mobile Combustion: combustion of fuels in transportation devices such as automobiles, trucks, buses, trains, airplanes, boats, ships, barges, vessels, etc.
• Process Emissions: emissions from physical or chemical processes such as CO₂ from the calcination step in cement manufacturing, CO₂ from catalytic cracking in petrochemical processing, PFC emissions from aluminum smelting, etc.
• Fugitive Emissions: intentional and unintentional releases such as equipment leaks from joints, seals, packing, gaskets, as well as fugitive emissions from coal piles, wastewater treatment, pits, cooling towers, gas processing facilities, etc.