A Gridded CO₂ Emissions Inventory for Portland, OR

Author

James Eckhardt Powell, Portland State UniversityFollow

Sponsor

Portland State University. Department of Physics

First Advisor

Christopher Butenhoff

Term of Graduation

Spring 2023

Date of Publication

5-16-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Applied Physics

Department

Physics

Language

English

Subjects

Carbon dioxide -- Oregon -- Portland -- Measurement, Atmospheric carbon dioxide -- Oregon -- Portland -- Measurement

DOI

10.15760/etd.3553

Physical Description

1 online resource (xxv, 163 pages)

Abstract

Here we develop a new high resolution inventory of CO₂ emissions for the three Oregon counties which comprise the bulk of the City of Portland, Oregon, USA. Locally curated and long-running data collection efforts for on-road traffic activity and emission rates are used to model on-road emissions, and a new survey of the area's natural gas network informs the building energy model. The inventory estimates total emissions of CO₂ for each hour of the year 2018 in the on-road, residential, and commercial building sectors at 1 km² resolution. The onroad inventory compares to within 3% with an independent national scale inventory, and the building inventory displays a good correlation with an independent national inventory (R² = 0.76). We find 2.34 million tonnes (MT) of CO₂ emitted in Multnomah County from on-road in 2018, while the national inventory DARTE finds 2.97 MT of CO₂e in 2010 for Multnomah County, and the official City of Portland/Multnomah County inventory finds 3.2 MT of CO₂e for 2017 from onroad transportation and construction equipment. The difference between the City’s official estimate of emissions and the gridded inventory’s estimate is in part due to the City of Portland’s reliance on county-level fuel sales, as compared to the gridded inventory's bottom-up estimate of vehicle miles traveled (VMT). This dissertation describes the first high resolution inventories of CO₂ created completely using a bottom-up methodology, using local activity data at the road link and building level. These inventories fill a need in the atmospheric modeling community for high spatial and temporal emission information that can be used in measurement-based monitoring and verification of urban-scale greenhouse gas emissions.

Rights

©2023 James Eckhardt Powell

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Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/40391

Recommended Citation

Powell, James Eckhardt, "A Gridded CO₂ Emissions Inventory for Portland, OR" (2023). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 6408.
https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.3553