Introduction

The report of this inventory of greenhouse gas emissions in Rhode Island has been designed primarily for presentation on the web. We reason that by making the inventory available in this way, we will be able to reach a much wider audience then would be possible with a hard-copy presentation.  It  will also be possible to keep this inventory current as new information becomes available.  Unlike reports from other states, this report has been kept to the minimum length consistent with clarity and accuracy, to reduce the time necessary to review it and thus perhaps further increase the numbers of those who will utilize it. Concise summaries of the results obtained for each category of emissions are linked to full documentation of the data and calculations..

The inventory has been compiled, in so far as possible, following the guidance of the EIIP Document Series, Volume VIII: Estimating Greenhouse Gas Emissions, December 1998 Review Draft (hereafter referred to as the Workbook). The Workbook is available for download at: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/eiip/techrep.htm#green

This report is divided into the following sections:

Executive summary

Scientific and international contexts

Fossil fuels

Electricity generation

Municipal solid waste

Forests and forest soils

Agriculture

Wastewater

Mobile sources (methane and nitrous oxide)

Stationary sources

Appendices

Other emissions sources included in the Workbook were not estimated for Rhode Island because they are irrelevant (e.g. methane emissions from flooded rice fields and from coal mines) or appear to be insignificant (e.g. emissions from the burning of agricultural crop wastes and from industrial production processes).

This report was prepared by the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University, under contract with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, by Matthew Amengual, Colin Cheney, Jonathan Dyer, Justin Huxol, Brian O’Neill and Harold Ward. Questions and comments should be referred to Harold Ward at: Harold_Ward@brown.edu or by s-mail to Box 1943, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912.  Funding for this work was provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under grant number CX826633-01.