Evaluating Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Reduction Measures

The following resources provide information and tools for helping identify and selecting GHG reduction measures. Crosscutting resources are presented first, followed by sector-specific resources.

Multi-Sector Analyses

•    Local Government Climate and Energy Strategy Series

The Local Government Climate and Energy Strategy Series gives a straightforward overview of GHG emission reduction strategies that local governments can use to achieve economic, environmental, social, and human health benefits. The series covers energy efficiency, transportation, community planning and design, solid waste and materials management, and renewable energy. This series is designed for policy makers and program implementers interested in cost-effective climate and energy strategies, such as mayors, city or town council members, energy managers, city planners, metropolitan and regional planning organizations, and their private and nonprofit partners. While developing PCAPs and CCAPs, state governments can also look to this series to identify potential areas of collaboration with local governments.

•  State-level Non-CO₂ Mitigation Analysis

The U.S. State-level Non-CO₂ Mitigation Analysis provides states with mitigation measure cost curves at the source-level to better understand the opportunities and costs for reducing emissions of non-CO₂ greenhouse gases. The methodological approach for calculating non-CO₂ GHG mitigation potential builds off the emission projections also generated in this report and is used to generate marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves, where each point on the cost curve reflects the average price and reduction potential for mitigation technologies. This data is used to estimate mitigation potential from 2020 through 2050, at five-year intervals. This data is also available through the Non-CO₂ Greenhouse Gas Data Tool which allows for customizable queries and data visualization.

• U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Plan

The U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan focuses on cutting pollution here at home from the largest sources of methane emissions in the United States. It uses all available tools—commonsense regulations, catalytic financial incentives, transparency and disclosure of actionable data, and public and private partnerships—to identify and reduce methane emissions. These cost-effective actions will dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, cut leaks, waste, and consumer costs, protect workers and communities, maintain and create high-quality, union-friendly jobs, and promote U.S. innovation and manufacturing of critical new technologies.

• U.S. Mid-Century Strategy for Deep Decarbonization

The 2016 United States Mid-Century Strategy (MCS) charts pathways for achieving deep GHG reduction by 2050, integrating action across the energy sector (power, transportation, buildings, and industry), lands, and non-CO₂ sources. It includes three detailed chapters on decarbonizing the energy sector; storing carbon and reducing emissions on lands; and reducing non-CO₂ emissions. State, local, and tribal governments can look to the overview of sector-based emissions and emission abatement strategies contained in the MCS to identify potential pathways of opportunity while developing their PCAPs and CCAPs.

• Long-Term Strategy of the United States

Similar to the MCS, the White House’s “Long-Term Strategy of the United States” outlines potential pathways to net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. State, local, and tribal governments can utilize this resource in their planning stages to develop GHG reduction strategies in line with U.S. national ambitions.

Transportation Sector

•    Evaluating GHG emissions in the transportation sector

Electricity Generation and Use

•   EPA Energy and Environment Guide to Action  

The EPA Energy and Environment Guide to Action offers real-world best practices to help states design and implement policies that reduce emissions associated with electricity generation and use. This guide helps state officials leverage other states' policy innovations and implementation experiences to achieve their own climate, energy, environmental, and equity goals and can be used to inform the creation of PCAPs and CCAPs, as well as identify potential areas for collaboration. Though this guide is focused on state actions, it is a helpful resource for local and tribal governments in identifying opportunity areas and areas for collaboration in the PCAP and CCAP development process.

The Energy and Environment Guide to Action is currently being updated in phases from its previous 2015 publication and will be updated on the website linked above. Seven updated chapters are listed below.

Updated chapters:

o   Overview of Electric Utility Policies (pdf)

o   Electricity Resource Planning and Procurement (pdf) 

o   Electric Utility Regulatory Frameworks and Financial Incentives (pdf)  

o   Interconnection and Net Metering (pdf) 

o   Customer Rates and Data Access (pdf) 

o   Maximizing Grid Investments (pdf) 

o   Energy Efficiency Programs and Resource Standards (pdf) 
 

•  Renewable Energy on Contaminated Lands

EPA’s RE-Powering America’s Land Initiative encourages renewable energy development on current and formerly contaminated lands, landfills, and mine sites when such development is aligned with the community’s vision for the site.

Commercial/Residential Building Sector

• ENERGY STAR for Policymakers

Through ENERGY STAR, EPA has helped dozens of state and local governments design and implement policies and programs focused on commercial and multifamily buildings to save energy, reduce GHG emissions, and stimulate local economic growth. The ENERGY STAR for Policymakers website provides tools, resources, and case studies designed to inform policy design and implementation.

• Building Performance Standards: Overview for State and Local Decision Makers

The EPA’s Benchmarking and Building Performance Standards Policy Toolkit aims to inform and support state and local government decision makers who are exploring adopting policies focused on reducing energy use and GHG emissions from existing commercial and multifamily buildings in their communities. This toolkit provides:

o   Key considerations for policy design

o   Opportunities for cross-jurisdictional coordination

o   Strategies for using EPA’s ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® tool

• ENERGY STAR New Residential Construction

ENERGY STAR certified homes and apartments are at least 10% more efficient than homes built to code and achieve a 20% improvement on average. The ENERGY STAR New Residential Construction website provides resources for working with builders and developers to advance energy efficiency.

• Home Upgrade with ENERGY STAR

The ENERGY STAR Home Upgrade is a carefully crafted set of six high-impact, energy efficiency improvements for homes. Designed to work together to deliver significant energy and cost savings, these upgrades can advance the transition from fossil fuels for a cleaner, healthier and more comfortable home. 

• Clean Energy Finance Guide

The EPA Clean Energy Finance Guide is an introductory resource for state and local governments working to encourage clean energy improvements, either in their own facilities or in the residential and commercial sectors. It is intended to help state and local officials identify the financing options that are best suited to their jurisdiction’s specific needs.

Industrial Sector

• Emerging Trends in Supply Chain Emission Engagement  

The Emerging Trends in Supply Chain Emission Engagement resource presents a brief overview of current trends in supply chain GHG management and provides examples of best and emerging practices in supply chain GHG management to help organizations develop approaches—both internal and external—to reduce their supply chain GHG emissions. It is intended to be used as a primer for organizations to orient and focus their supply chain GHG management efforts, not to provide a comprehensive operational guide for engaging suppliers. State, local, and tribal governments can utilize this resource when developing their PCAPs and CCAPs as an informative resource for identifying areas to engage industrial partners within their jurisdictions.

•  Industrial Energy Management (ENERGY STAR)

Hundreds of industrial companies use ENERGY STAR industrial energy management resources to improve efficiency and reduce costs, while protecting the environment. State, local, and tribal governments can use these resources to identify opportunities to work with industrial facilities within their boundaries to reduce GHG emissions associated with industrial energy use.

• Methane Challenge Program

Methane Challenge Program: industry partners transparently report systematic and comprehensive actions to reduce methane emissions and are publicly recognized as leaders in reducing methane emissions in the U.S.

Waste and Materials Management

• Circular Economy and Sustainable Materials Management

Approximately half of global greenhouse gas emissions are the result of natural resource extraction and processing.  A circular economy reduces material use, redesigns materials, products, and services to be less resource intensive, and recaptures “waste” as a resource to manufacture new materials and products.

Sustainable materials management (SMM) is a systematic approach to using and reusing materials more productively and sustainably over their entire life cycles, generally minimizing the amount of materials involved and all the associated environmental impacts. Decisions about how goods (such as food, plastic packaging, and building materials) are produced, transported, used, and disposed of can make a big difference in the amount of the resources (materials, energy, water, land) used, greenhouse gases emitted, environmental impacts created, and waste produced. EPA offers success stories in reducing waste, measurement options, tools, and resources for SMM. Tools and resources can be found on EPA’s Resources, Waste and Climate Change and Managing and Transforming Waste Streams webpages.

EPA’s Waste Reduction Model (WARM) provides high-level estimates of potential greenhouse gas emissions reductions, energy savings, and economic impacts from several different waste management practices. WARM estimates these impacts from baseline and alternative waste management practices—source reduction, recycling, anaerobic digestion, combustion, composting and landfilling. WARM presently covers 61 material types commonly found in municipal solid waste and construction and demolition debris.

EPA’s Recycled Content (ReCon) Tool helps estimate embodied carbon, the climate footprint across the full lifecycle of purchasing and/or manufacturing materials with varying degrees of post-consumer recycled content.

EPA’s SMM Prioritization Tools are life cycle-based tools to help users identify potential opportunities for environmental improvement in the production and consumption of goods and services. These tools cover the entire economy. These tools can serve as a starting place to help prioritize actions, focus limited human and financial resources to achieve greater overall environmental benefit and consider key industries for collaboration. Users can identify whether impacts originate in their supply chain and where or from their operations, as well as what purchases are generating the impacts. Indicator covered include environmental impacts, resource use, waste generated, chemical releases, and economic and social.

Additionally, EPA offers tools and resources specific to the Sustainable Management of Food. More than 85 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from landfilled food waste results from activities prior to disposal, including production, transport, processing, and distribution. To reduce these emissions, EPA works to promote innovation and highlight the value and efficient management of food as a resource.

From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste lays out the environmental footprint of food loss and waste in the U.S. and the environmental benefits that can be achieved by reducing U.S. food loss and waste. It focuses primarily on five inputs to the U.S. cradle-to-consumer food supply chain -- agricultural land use, water use, application of pesticides and fertilizers, and energy use -- plus one environmental impact -- greenhouse gas emissions. 

• Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP)

The EPA’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) promotes the use of landfill gas as a renewable, green energy source. Landfill gas is the natural by-product of the decomposition of solid waste in landfills and is comprised primarily of carbon dioxide and methane. LMOP forms partnerships with communities, landfill owners, utilities, power marketers, states, project developers, tribes, and non-profit organizations to overcome barriers to project development by helping them assess project feasibility, find financing, and market the benefits of project development to the community.

LMOP’s LFG Energy Project Development Handbook provides an overview of landfill gas (LFG) energy project development guidance and presents the technological, economic and regulatory considerations that affect the feasibility and success of LFG energy projects. State, local, and tribal governments can utilize this resource when assessing potential opportunities to mitigate landfill emissions in their PCAPs and CCAPs.

• Energy Efficiency and Energy Usage Options for Water Utilities

For many municipal governments, drinking water and wastewater plants typically are the largest energy consumers, often accounting for 30 to 40 percent of total energy consumed. EPA offers tools and resources on incorporating energy efficiency practices, determining energy usage, and renewable energy options at water and wastewater plants.

• Local Government Guide to Developing and Implementing Greenhouse Gas Reduction Programs: Energy Efficiency in Water and Wastewater Facilities

The Local Government Guide to Developing and Implementing GHG Reduction Programs describes how water and wastewater facilities can lead by example and achieve multiple benefits by improving the energy efficiency of their new, existing, and renovated buildings and their day- to-day operations. It is designed to be used by facility managers, energy and environment staff, local government officials, and mayors and city councils.

• EPA maintains a list of local government Climate Action Plans with materials management and waste actions.

Please visit EPA’s Example Local Government Climate Action Plans that Address Materials Management and Waste where you can browse through them by topic. The examples are not comprehensive but gives ideas of what you can replicate in your community.

Agricultural Sector

• AgSTAR: Biogas Recovery in the Agriculture Sector

AgSTAR is a collaborative program sponsored by the EPA and the USDA that promotes the use of biogas recovery systems to reduce methane emissions from livestock waste. Contained on this website is a variety of useful resources to inform the development of emission reduction strategies in the agricultural sector for state, local, and tribal governments developing PCAPs and CCAPs. These resources include background knowledge and training resources, planning checklists, and potential strategies, projects and implementation opportunities.

• Agriculture Air Quality Conservation Guide – Crop and Land Management

The Agriculture Air Quality Conservation Guide can be used to address agriculturally related air resource concerns in areas where agricultural emissions from cropping systems and general land management are determined to be significant contributors to air quality impairment. Many of the measures provided in this guide also have additional resource benefits such as soil, water or energy conservation, as well as carbon sequestration.

• Agriculture Air Quality Conservation Guide – Livestock and Poultry

The Agriculture Air Quality Conservation Guide for Poultry and Livestock  Production Systems can be used to address agriculturally related air resource concerns in areas where agricultural emissions from livestock operations are determined to be significant contributors to air quality impairment. Like the conservation guide for crop and land management listed above, many measures provided here also have additional resource benefits such as soil, water or energy conservation, as well as carbon sequestration.

• Composting and Anaerobic Digestion

Organic materials, including food waste, yard trim, and manure can be turned into valuable soil amendments via composting and anaerobic digestion. Composting food waste rather than sending it to landfills avoids methane emissions. Adding finished compost to compacted or depleted soils improves soil health and the soil’s ability to retain water, therefore building resilience to climate change impacts such as flooding and droughts and preventing soil erosion and mitigating the impacts of stormwater runoff. Importantly, compost sequesters carbon in the soil and helps absorb greenhouse gas emissions.