The Paris Agreement requires all nations to report on their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals to UNFCCC, with the Austrian Environmental Agency (UBA) is responsible for the development of the Austrian National Inventory Report (NIR). A recent EU regulation requires member states to adopt their national reporting rules and encourages them to establish national inventory systems to ensure data consistency. However, the practice of GHG emission accounting and reporting is still plagued with inconsistencies due to the variety of emerging policies, national varieties and deviations. There is a need for independent GHG reporting and verification capacities through integration of specialised satellite information products, specifically from the Copernicus programme.

The overall motivation of the project “GHG-KIT: Keep it traceable” is to develop methods and prototype a supporting system for integrated Greenhouse gas accounting and monitoring based on existing and upcoming new satellite missions. This system shall support and improve the national Austrian reporting capacities.

The project goal is the finalisation of a reliable and scientifically proven concept for the development of an Earth Observation (EO)-supported GHG reporting system, together with the main stakeholders. To facilitate a standardized approach that will provide maximum flexibility for operational implementation the system is based on a modular tool-kit design to cover all different sub-elements of a national monitoring system. The concept foresees integration of already available workflows and information streams with an open value chain enabling flexible and readily scalable new solutions. Thereby GHG-KIT will offer a centralized, satellite-based data and information source for GHG verification and reporting with added value for individual users.

The value of EO information for the improvement and verification of GHG reporting is demonstrated along the implementation of two specific prototypes, enabling

1.      an improvement in the LULUCF reporting (bottom-up approach) and

2.      the verification of the currently reported emissions (top-down approach).

“GHG-KIT: Keep it traceable” is being developed through a unique cooperation between a multi-disciplinary Austrian industry-science team and international experts. The resulting blueprint for system and service implementation will be a major milestone towards a new national greenhouse gas monitoring expertise with high potential for European export. This ASAP lead project will leapfrog the participating companies and science partners into pole-positions towards operational future CO2M mission services.