The Pittsburgh project team made significant progress toward their goal of developing a robust carbon inventory for the city and its Climate Action Plan. During the partnership’s first month, the team sat down with local utility representatives to discuss procedures for sharing data, as well as the format and resolution that could be expected. The team learned that electricity and natural gas data are both available at neighborhood scale. (In previous years, it was only available by zip code.) Currently the city is working to generate memorandums of understanding (MoUs), which will establish a timeline and format for data transfer from the utilities to the city annually in an automated process. This will be a great advancement for Pittsburgh: an automated process streamlines the greenhouse gas inventory and high-resolution data will enable more accuracy and accountability in analysis and future carbon mitigation initiatives.
In the weeks ahead, the team will be conducting a sensitivity analysis to address uncertainty in the data used in the greenhouse gas inventory. They intend to analyze Pittsburgh’s previous greenhouse gas inventory to get a better feel for the dominant sources of uncertainty and variability. Ultimately, this analysis will enable the city to prioritize data collection around those major sources to reduce uncertainty – and to be transparent in communications about where it remains.
Regretfully, Ari Lattanzi had to leave Pittsburgh for personal reasons this month. Despite a geographical separation, she will continue to engage with the project team during their weekly calls and otherwise on a volunteer basis – this will enable continuity and support for the team throughout the duration of this ambitious and important project.
