CEEI - Frequently Asked Questions
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What is a community energy and emissions inventory (CEEI)?
- A community energy and emissions inventory is an estimate of energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within a community over one year.
- The 2007 CEEI User Guide briefly explains the data sources, emission factors and methodologies used, as well as some of the limitations with the present reports.
How is a ‘community’ inventory different from a ‘corporate’ one?
- A community inventory includes the major sources of energy use and GHG emissions within the jurisdictional area of a local government (‘geopolitical boundary’).
- A corporate, or ‘local government operations’ inventory typically includes only those emissions that are under the operational and/or financial control of the local government itself (e.g., civic buildings, civic fleets). The Joint Provincial-UBCM Green Communities Committee Draft Guidance: Carbon Neutral Local Government – Helping Local Governments Understand How to be Carbon Neutral in Their Corporate Operations is intended to support the development of local government inventories as they work towards becoming carbon neutral in their own corporate operations.
Why is the Province developing CEEI?
- CEEI’s are intended to support local governments in at least one of three ways:
- to fulfill the second of three commitments of the Climate Action Charter: “measuring and reporting on their community’s GHG emissions profile”;
- to establish a base year to help inform targets, policies, actions related to the new Green Communities Legislation; and
- as an additional benefit, to support BC local government members of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) Partners in Climate Protection (PCP) program to achieve Milestone One (community inventory).
- Also, by developing a province-wide database, the Province is not only reducing the burden on local governments to develop such inventories, but also on data providers for accommodating certain one-off data requests.
- CEEI provides a consistent province-wide reporting approach for all local governments that also supports broader provincial greenhouse gas objectives.
- As CEEI reporting improves, local governments should be able to track their progress, begin to make meaningful comparisons with other B.C. communities, and view that progress within the context of their own broader community energy and emissions, or higher level, plans.
How have local governments been involved in CEEI development to-date?
- Over 20 communities received ‘preliminary’ 2005 CEEI reports. Their feedback has also helped to improve the initial 2007 CEEI Reports.
- Staff from UBCM and Metro Vancouver participate on the CEEI working group.
- In 2007, 32% of BC local governments responded to a User Needs survey. In Spring 2009, a follow up survey - http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/climate/ceei/pdf/ceei-user-surv-res.pdf, is helping to guide further development of the CEEI.
What additional CEEI information/data may be available to local governments?
- In addition to the draft CEEI 2007 Reports, a study is currently underway to estimate heating oil and propane consumption in communities. These estimates are anticipated to be incorporated into the 2007 Update Reports in late 2009.
- To help ‘tell the story’ about community energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, the Ministry of Community and Rural Development and local government partners are developing ‘secondary indicators’ to the CEEI.
- The CEEI Working Group is presently exploring the feasibility of extending CEEI Reports to electoral areas across the province.
- CEEIs estimate energy use and emissions in the current year. Local governments are best positioned to develop their own forecasts using local knowledge of anticipated population growth and economic activity, and their own targets as guided by the Ministry of Community and Rural Development - http://www.cd.gov.bc.ca/lgd/greencommunities/targets.htm.
- For more information on inventories and their role in community energy and emissions planning, see the recently published "Community Energy & Emissions Planning - A Guide for BC Local Governments" at http://www.toolkit.bc.ca/ceei.
How accurate is the data provided through CEEI?
- As with most inventories, the level of accuracy depends highly on the completeness of the data sources and consistency in the methodologies applied. See the 2007 CEEI Report User Guide for more information on accuracy and other related technical issues. The CEEI Working Group will continue to work to improve data accuracy. As data improves, past reports will be updated and re-posted in order to provide a consistent method of comparison over time.
My community has done an inventory that differs from CEEI. Why is that?
- Inventories can differ for several reasons, fundamental to these differences can be the methodologies applied. For more information, see the CEEI commissioned report “Energy and GHG Inventories by local governments in B.C.” at http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/climate/ceei/resources.htm.
Does CEEI replace other community greenhouse gas inventories?
- No, at least not in the short term.
- There are some local governments around the Province where such inventories already exist or where there is sufficient in-house capacity and other localized information for those local governments to either generate their own inventory, or expand on their CEEI report.
- In future, should local governments, UBCM and the Province so determine, CEEI could become the standard base year, monitoring and reporting tool, providing consistency, accuracy and comparability for all BC communities.
Under the Climate Action Charter local governments will be offsetting corporate emissions to zero. Will those emissions (before offsetting) be included in the CEEI?
- Yes. Though while local governments’ own corporate emissions are included in CEEIs, the CEEI does not profile these separately, nor do CEEIs account for the purchase or sale of the related offsets.
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