Park City - Community Carbon Footprint

Community Footprint :: Community Carbon Footprint

Read the full Park City Community Carbon Footprint and Road Map for Reduction...
*See Note at the bottom of the webpage regarding full report.

There is widespread consensus among the scientific community that human activities are negatively impacting the Earth’s climate through increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, causing the potential for large-scale adverse health, social, economic and ecological effects. Climate change is expected to impact Park City, Utah in a variety of ways. Primarily, Park City’s climate is expected to warm substantially, delaying the date when snow starts to fall, and perhaps resulting in no snow accumulation at all by 2100 (Park City Mountain Resort). Decreasing snowpack is also likely to significantly reduce groundwater resources, increasing the frequency of drought and wildfire.

The Community Carbon Footprint and Roadmap to Reduction is the latest effort among Park City’s many initiatives to address climate change. Among many other initiatives are Park City Municipal’s Environmental Strategic Plan to guide the community’s comprehensive sustainability efforts; Park City’s signing of the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement; community engagements such as Save Our Snow; efforts to reduce Park City Municipal’s own GHG footprint of internal government operations and the many projects and programs lead by Park City’s many environmental non-profits

To develop the Community Carbon Footprint, Park City’s GHG emissions were calculated for the baseline year of 2007 as well as for 2005 as a supplemental year, with the aim to compile a complete, consistent, accurate, and transparent inventory using accepted methodologies. Specifically, the inventory draws on well reviewed and accepted methodologies from the International Standards Organization (ISO)14064-1, The Climate Registry (TCR), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and methodologies implemented in ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability’s Clean Air and Climate Protection (CACP) software. The fundamental design of the inventory is based on the guidelines of ISO14064-1 with additional guidance from ICLEI’s International Local Government Greenhouse Gas Emissions Analysis Protocol to address issues specific to conducting community inventories.

The footprint includes the following GHGs:

carbon dioxide (CO₂),
methane (CH₄),
nitrous oxide (N₂O),
perfluorocarbons (PFCs),
hydroflurocarbons (HFCs), and
sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆),

with the large majority of Park City’s climate change impact resulting from emissions of the first three gases. Units of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) are used to normalize the global warming potential of the various GHGs. The inventory seeks to quantify the GHG emissions of all activities within the Park City limits and includes all direct (Scope 1) emissions from natural gas consumption, propane consumption, on-road vehicle transportation, off-road vehicle and equipment use, refrigerant losses, fertilizers, and feedstock. Indirect (Scope 2) emissions from electricity consumption are also included, as are other indirect (Scope 3) emissions from airline travel, solid waste disposal, and wastewater treatment. These represent Park City’s Total Emissions. To place an emphasis on personal responsibility and what individual residents can do to reduce their emissions, Sphere of Individual Influence emissions are presented. These emissions include residential energy use and transportation activities - emissions that result from the daily actions taken by individual citizens and therefore within the capacity of the individual to reduce. The inventory boundaries of both approaches are compared to ICLEI’s Local Government Greenhouse Gas Protocol in the table below.

Total Emissions (ISO 14064-1)	ICLEI Supported	Sphere of Individual Influence
Electricity consumption · Natural gas consumption · Propane consumption · On-road vehicle transportation · Off-road vehicle and equipment use · Airline travel (resident & visitor) · Solid waste disposal · Wastewater treatment · Refrigerant losses · Fertilizers · Livestock	· Electricity consumption · Electricity emission factor changed from Utah specific to northwest regional factor per ICLEI protocol (See electricity section for more information) · Natural gas consumption · Propane consumption · On-road vehicle transportation · Solid waste disposal	· Residential electricity consumption · Residential natural gas consumption · Residential propane consumption · Resident on-road vehicle transportation · Resident airline travel · Solid waste disposal (50% of community total)

*items in blue are only included in the Total Emissions (ISO 14064-1) totals

Total Emissions in Park City in 2007 were 790,645 tCO₂e (see note at bottom of page). The ICLEI supported GHG emissions in 2007 were 475,663 tCO₂e - about 60 percent of the emissions represented in the Total Emissions context. Finally, the emissions in the Sphere of Individual Influence in 2007 were 158,995 tCO₂e, or about 20 percent of the Total Emissions in the community.

Aggregate Community Emissions by Context

Energy consumption and transportation were the primary sources of GHG emissions in the community, with small portions contributed by solid waste disposal and other sources, such as losses from refrigeration equipment.

Total Community Emissions by Source

Stationary consumption of energy in Park City - including electricity, natural gas, and propane - represented 41.2 percent of the 790,645 tons CO2-equivalent total emissions in the Park City inventory in 2007. The majority of these emissions are from electricity consumption, with natural gas and propane comprising significantly smaller portions.

Transportation emissions for Park City include on-road vehicles and transit, off-road vehicles and equipment, and airline travel. These emissions accounted for 57.5 percent of total emissions in 2007. The majority of these emissions are from airline travel, followed by on-road vehicle transportation and off-road vehicles and equipment.

Waste disposal activities in Park City - including solid waste disposed at the landfill, construction and demolition waste, and wastewater treatment - represented 1.2 percent of the total emissions of the Park City inventory in 2007. The majority of these emissions are from solid waste disposed of at the landfill.

Other minor GHG emission sources accounted for 867 tCO₂e in 2007, or 0.1 percent of the total emissions. These include refrigerant chemical losses, enteric and manure methane emissions, fertilizer application, and beer production.

Read the full Park City Community Carbon Footprint and Road Map for Reduction...

*Note that we recently recalculated the 2007 community carbon footprint after receiving updated, more accurate electricity & natural gas data. The updated community carbon footprint for 2007 is 790,645 tons CO2-equivalent and this total is reflected on the charts and other info on this page. However, the full report has not been updated with this figure and still includes the 1,003,712 tCO₂e estimate. Other than the electricity data and natural gas amendments, all other components of the carbon footprint remain the same as in the original report.