Uncertainty in estimating and mitigating industrial related GHG emissions

Global climate change has been one of the challenging environmental concern s facing policy makers in the past decade. The characterization of the wide range of greenhouse gas emissions sources and sinks as well as their behav ior in the atmosphere remains an on-going activity in many countries. Leban on, being a signatory to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, is req uired to submit and regularly update a national inventory of greenhouse gas emissions sources and removals. Accordingly, an inventory of greenhouse ga ses from various sectors was conducted following the guidelines set by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The invent ory indicated that the industrial sector contributes about 29 percent to th e total greenhouse gas emissions divided between industrial processes and e nergy requirements at 12 and 17 percent, respectively. This paper describes major mitigation scenarios to reduce emissions from this sector based on a ssociated technical, economic, environmental, and social characteristics. E conomic ranking of these scenarios was conducted and uncertainty in emissio n factors used in the estimation process was emphasized. For this purpose, theoretical and experimental emission factors were used as alternatives to default factors recommended by the IPCC and the significance of resulting d eviations in emission estimation is presented. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Lt d. All rights reserved.