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MOVING TOWARDS A CLIMATE NEUTRAL UN Inventory boundary

The UN system has agreed on a common minimum boundary for its GHG inventory, which specifies activi- ties, emission sources and GHGs, as described below.

Activities The October 2007 decision of the UN system Chief Ex- ecutives Board (CEB) limits the boundary of the UN to facility operations and travel. The UN agencies, funds and programmes therefore accounted for GHG emis- sions from headquarters, regional and administrative centres and field offices. Emissions from activities that are funded both through the regular and extra-bud- getary sources are included in the UN’s boundary.

Among others, the following are not included in the UN minimum agreed boundary: Emissions from staff commuting to work; Emissions from projects implemented by external entities or from grants to other institutions; Emissions from electricity losses, courier, mail, print- ing and shipping; Embodied carbon in for instance food, beverages, paper and computers; and Emissions from construction.

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Emission sources The GHG inventory of UN system organizations in- cludes as a minimum the following emission sources: Mobile fuel combustion, such as emissions from of- ficial air, rail or road travel; Stationary fuel combustion, such as energy con- sumption in buildings for electricity, heating, air con- ditioning, hot water and cooking, and so on; and Fugitive emissions, such as leakage of GHGs from re- frigeration and air-conditioning equipment.

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If for some reason the organization was not able to in- clude the above in the inventory, the omission was to be documented and an explanation provided in the in- ventory management plan.

Greenhouse gas coverage The GHG Protocol requires reporting of the six GHGs covered by the Kyoto Protocol, namely CO2 HFC, PFC and SF6

, CH4 , N2 . There are no emissions of SF6 O, from

UN activities. The methodology requires emissions to be reported separately for each GHG as well as aggre- gated as carbon-dioxide equivalent (CO2

eq). There

are several areas where it has been difficult to report on all GHGs. As indicated above, in 2008, the UN’s methodology does not take into account the non-CO2 effects of aviation, although efforts were underway

to develop appropriate metrics and approaches to resolve this issue. Similarly, the default national emis- sion factors that were available for public transport and electricity production did not include gases other than CO2

.

The UN’s methodology allows the use of proxies to es- timate GHG emissions from “small” offices, which it has defined as offices with fewer than five staff members. If such offices have been excluded altogether from the inventory, the data gap must be reported with an indi- cation of plans on how to account for these small of- fices in the future.

To assess inventory completeness, organizations were asked to identify and report the data gaps in coverage of emissions under the minimum agreed boundary. Whenever data were not readily available, organiza- tions had the option of estimating GHG emissions based on clearly defined assumptions and proxies (kWh per square metre of office floor space). Such prox- ies can be derived from real data collected from similar buildings in the region and are discussed in the indi- vidual agencies inventory management plans.

Emissions from sources outside the UN minimum agreed boundary UN system organizations have been allowed the flex- ibility to report on an optional basis on emissions from sources that lie outside the UN minimum agreed boundary, provided an explanation is provided in the inventory management plan. These could include for example emissions from commuting, waste and paper use. If organizations chose to do so, emissions from these source categories should also be reported in subsequent years for the purpose of time series comparison.

UN GHG inventory database and reports According to the system in place in 2008, UN system organizations have provided their GHG data in several standardized Calculators (the UN Greenhouse Gas Calculator, the UN Interface to the ICAO Carbon Emis- sions Calculator, and a spreadsheet for reported data using other methods of compiling the inventory). To accommodate the UN system’s specific GHG reporting needs, DFS/ICTD developed and designed a custom- ized “data-mining tool” to extract data from the work- books and store all the information in a common GHG database. DFS/ICTD has also made available a web- portal where registered users can generate custom- ized GHG reports directly from the Internet.