Overview

The city recognizes the need to take a more proactive role in developing strategies to adapt to the local impacts climate change will have on our community, as well as undertake efforts to reduce the community’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. In order to help inform overall environmental policy development, the city worked with Lotus Sustainability and Engineering to conduct an inventory of the community’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions for 2019. The inventory quantifies the amount of GHG’s emitted from sources located within city boundaries (including mobile sources from the transportation sector), and emissions resulting from the use of grid supplied electricity, steam, and cooling within city boundaries. The GHG inventory was developed using the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC), considered to be an accepted standard for conducting inventories worldwide.

Findings

In 2019, greenhouse gas emissions in Commerce City totaled 2,0754,907 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (mt CO2e). The largest emissions-producing sector was the Industrial Processes and Product Use sector, which accounted for 53% of all GHG emissions. Building Energy Use (24%), Transportation (13%), and Waste (10%) accounted for the remainder of community emissions.

In 2019, emissions from buildings and homes accounted for 24% of Commerce City’s community GHG emissions (488,894 mt CO2e). The figure below, breaks down the specific sources of those emissions from community buildings.

Electricity use accounted for 60% of Commerce City emissions in 2019 (293,303 mt CO2e) and natural gas use made up 40% of building energy use emissions (195,477 mt CO2e), including fugitive emissions.

A more detailed summary and the full report can be found below. The complete inventory is on file with the Community Development Department and can be provided upon request.

• Executive summary link
• 2019 GHG Inventory (Final)

Where Do We Go From Here?

The City plans to publish an inventory annually using the same protocol and standards, with the goal of tracking the community’s emission reduction over time, monitoring trends and reductions by sector, and understanding areas to focus on and areas to improve.

The City has also developed a business as usual (BAU) projection that estimates community year-by-year emissions until 2050, assuming current demographic and growth conditions and statewide policy trends. Based on findings from the GHG inventory community feedback and input received through the stakeholder process, the City will model a series of potential policy recommendations and strategies for their potential to reduce community-wide GHG emissions. The BAU projection can be found here.