Measure emissions to manage emissions.

Abstract

In the 30 years since the world began negotiating the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, no one has identified exactly where all that pollution is coming from. That will begin to change next week when Climate TRACE (Tracking Real-Time Atmospheric Carbon Emissions)-a nonprofit coalition of artificial intelligence (AI) specialists, data scientists, researchers, and nongovernmental organizations-releases the first facility-level inventory of the largest known individual sources of the 162 million tons of GHG pollution emitted into the troposphere every day. With thousands of businesses, banks, investors, and 88 nation-states committed to reducing emissions to net zero by 2050, comprehensively tracking progress toward that goal is essential. This is especially important given last week's United Nations Emissions Gap Report indicating that the world is far behind pace for reducing emissions by 2030.