User-oriented Development of Global Emission Inventories: Bottom-up Modelling of Emissions from the Transport Sector

Abstract

The transport sectors are major contributors to climate change and their traffic volumes are expected to grow in the coming decades, thus challenging the achievement of the climate goals set by the Paris Agreement. In order to accomplish high-quality comparative monitoring, to develop scenarios for future emissions, and to enable a robust assessment of climate protection measures, the allocation of emissions to the subsector level is an essential requirement. The DLR project ELK EmissionsLandKarte (emission map) contributes here in several respects: (1) by specifying requirements in an application based manner, i.e. ensuring compatibility with existing inventories, such as the ones generated for IPCC, and addressing gaps in spatial resolution and methodological aspects; (2) by providing an input database consistent with both statistical data and SSP scenarios; and (3) by employing a bottom-up approach that allows the attribution of climate impacts to specific transport services and prospective analyses where, for example, activity levels change or alternative fuels affect regional emission factors. Here the new methodological approaches are outlined for mapping emissions and present the first prototypical global emission inventories for land transport, maritime shipping and aviation in the reference year 2019.