Assessing London's indirect carbon emissions

This report summarises the results of the application of the new PAS 2070 British Standard: ‘Specification for the assessment of greenhouse gas emissions of a city’ to London. It explains the methodology London has used to apply the PAS 2070 to understand its indirect carbon emissions, as well as an indication of London’s consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions in 2010.

The London case study provides two methodologies for measuring a city’s wider greenhouse gas emissions:

• the Direct Plus Supply Chain (DPSC) methodology includes all greenhouse gas emissions that occur within a city’s geographic boundary, as well as the supply chains associated with the city’s major products and services including waste and waste water, construction, food and transport.
• the Consumption Based methodology measures the greenhouse gas emissions from the products and services that London consumes. Therefore greenhouse gases emitted as a result of products and services that are produced in London, but not consumed in London, are not included.

The results are not a formal measurement of London’s emissions and do not assign responsibility for emissions; the London Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory (LEGGI) will continue to serve that purpose. Rather the assessment is an indication of the potential wider scope of emissions which could be attributable to London, and a tool for local authorities, policy makers and other stakeholders to assess the implications of these.

The full case study and PAS 2070 specification are available from the BSI website. The full dataset for the London case study is available from the London datastore.