The Government Operations GHG Inventory is a component of the Government Operations Climate Action Plan.
For Ulster County, the annual GHG Inventory is a necessary tool for determining the quantity of offsets required each year to achieve net carbon neutral operations. These offsets are not counted as actual reductions in emissions or as progress toward GHG reduction goals. The GHG accounting in the inventory report assumes the absence of all offsets.
It is important to note that GHG inventories can differ substantially in scope and methods. They vary because of differences in the type of organization that is undergoing an inventory (e.g. a small municipality versus a state), they can vary due to the type of data that is available for conducting the inventory, and they can vary due to the goals of the inventory. However, in order for the inventory to be used for long term comparison and evaluation, the analysis methods must be consistent across time.
Data collection processes play an important role in achieving this consistency. The Ulster County Department of the Environment has improved its data collection methods through the preparation of two annual reports: the Green Fleet Policy Report and the Building Benchmarking Report. Both of these reports are mandated by legislative policy and provide the energy use information for annual updates to the County’s GHG Inventory.