National and international efforts to reduce the human impact on the global climate rely on knowing the amount of GHG emissions released due to human activities. GHG inventories provide information that is vital for the design of policies and measures to reduce emissions of GHGs into the atmosphere. The quality of your inventory data relies on the use of appropriate methodologies, reliable statistical information, and representative factors to derive emission estimates. Waste handling and treatment is a key activity for protecting public health, a significant source of GHG emissions, and simultaneously both a low cost mitigation option and source of bioenergy.

This course provides a rigorous training on the emission sources and estimation methodologies for the waste sector based on the internationally endorsed 2006 IPCC Guidelines. This course should be combined with the Institute’s 501 IPCC: Introduction and Cross-Cutting Issues course.

Specifically in this course, you will learn to:

1. Identify the specific activities resulting in GHG emissions from waste processes
2. Estimate emissions using IPCC methodologies
3. Distinguish between methodological tiers available for estimating emissions and their data requirements
4. List and describe the possible reasons for double-counting and how to avoid them
5. Identify and avoid typical problems with the estimation of emissions from the waste sector