Availability: Emission

To what extent is emissions information available as open data?

Definitions

Definitions and Identification

Emissions data reported to the UNFCCC should be easily accessible to actors and audiences within the country, so that a diverse group of climate decision-makers can take action across scales. Emissions datasets should include detailed information on sources of greenhouse gas emissions and use unique identifiers that allow easy assessment across inventories, reduction commitments, and sources.

Among other functions, it should be possible to use emissions datasets to easily and accurately assess the current state of the country's emissions and how it is changing (or not) over time, to identify major sources of greenhouse gases within the country, and to explain how the country's emissions fit within the global context.

This question is designed to align with efforts countries already put into reporting to the UNFCCC. Consequently, it takes as its starting point the emissions data already reported to the UNFCCC and focuses primarily on whether or not that data is also made open, accessible, and useful to actors within the country. It elaborates on that to include sources of emissions, but the specifics of the national dataset would largely be defined by the country's UNFCCC reporting.

Note: The focus here is on making already existent data more useful and more broadly available; data on a national site doesn't have to explicitly state that it is the same data as that reported to the UNFCCC, so long as it includes the same data.

Research Guidance

Starting points

• Sources:
  • The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; depending on whether the country falls into the Annex I or non-Annex I category, the data may be reported in a dedicated inventory document, the national communications, a biennial update report, or a separate report. Links to all of these can be found here.
• Search:
  • Websites of the ministry of environment, office of climate action, etc.; relevant keywords for searching such websites include "emissions," "greenhouse gases" or "GHGs," "sinks," "inventory," and the "UN Framework Convention on Climate Change," and similar in appropriate languages.
• Consult:
  • Officials in your national or local environmental or climate action office.
  • Officials at civil society organizations dedicated to climate action, environmental protection, or nature conservation.
  • Journalists who report on climate change, vulnerability, or adaptation.
  • Academic researchers who study emissions and climate change in your country.

What to look for?

To complete the assessment for this question you will need to access and explore the available data. This may involve running queries on datasets to check the variety of fields included.

Look for evidence that can answer the following questions:

• Is the emissions data reported to the UNFCCC also made open and accessible to actors within the country through national or sub-national platforms or portals? Are significant portions of it missing in the national version?
• Who or what are the significant producers of emissions in the country? What level of granularity is available for emissions sources?
• How straightforward is it to match emissions data across inventories, reduction commitments, and information about emission sources?

National and sub-national considerations

In some countries, emissions data may be generated and published at the sub-national level, carried out by individual states, regions, or cities.

Focus on national government first, and then assess whether:

• National datasets also include data from sub-national or local government units;
• Equivalent data exists for a selection of sub-national or local government units, but is not nationally aggregated;

To assess countries where emissions data is organized sub-nationally, researchers should select the strongest example of sub-national practice, and then indicate whether this is an outlier or an example of widespread practice.

Question sub-components

Show/hide supporting questions

Existence

• Is this data available online in any form?
  • Data is not available online.

    Supporting questions: Are there other offline ways to access this data in the country? (e.g., attending an office to inspect it).

  • Data is available, but not as a result of government action.

    Supporting questions: If government is not providing access to data, how is this data available? Please provide a URL(s) for where this data can be found.

  • Data is available from government, or because of government actions.

    Supporting questions: Please provide a URL(s) for where this data can be found.

Elements

• Data fields and quality:

• Nationally published data includes detailed information on greenhouse gas emissions and targets reported to the UNFCCC. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly explain, and provide URLs.

• Data contains detailed information on sources of greenhouse gas emissions. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly explain, and provide URLs.

• Emissions data includes, or site where emissions data is made available links to, details of land use effects on emissions. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly explain, and provide URLs.

• The dataset contains unique identifiers for greenhouse gas emissions that allow easy assessment across inventories, reduction commitments, and sources. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly explain, and provide URLs.

• Data openness, timing, and structure:

• Dataset is available free of charge. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data is openly licensed. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If No: If there are explicit restrictions placed on re-use of the dataset, briefly describe those here.

  If Partially or Yes: If the data is provided with an explicit open license, please provide the name of the license, or a link to it here.

• Data is available in all the country’s official or national languages. If the country has no official or national languages, data is available in the major languages of the country. (No, Partially, Yes) Assess this against the list of official, national, or in-use languages you provided as part of your response to the governance indicator that asks, "To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and guidance require that data collection and publication processes be available in the country’s official or national languages?"

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly describe the language coverage available.

• There are accessible and open official tools available to help users explore data. (No, Partially , Yes) Answer 'Partially' if tools make it possible to get at extracts of data without having to download a full dataset. Answer 'Yes' if there is an interactive tool that displays user-filtered extracts of the data to answer simple questions without downloading data at all.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide URL.

  If Partially : What are the main barriers to accessibility and usability?

• Data is timely and updated. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: When was the most recent update to this dataset?

• Historical data is available that allows users to track change over time. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

  If Partially or Yes: For what time period(s) (e.g., start and end dates) is data available?

• Data is provided in machine-readable format(s) (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide a URL where this machine-readable data can be found. (Additional URLs can be included in the justification and supporting evidence)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide a comma separated list of the formats available? (E.g. csv, json)

  If Partially: What prevents you from assessing this data as fully machine-readable?

• The machine-readable dataset is available as a whole (No, Partially, Yes) Answer no if it's only possible to access individual records; Answer partially if it's possible to export extracts of the data; Answer yes if there are bulk downloads or APIs providing access to the whole dataset without financial, technical or legal barriers.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide a URL where bulk download access is available or described.

  If Partially or Yes: If bulk access is provided through an API, please provide a link to where the API is described.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Negative scoring:

• This information is missing required data. (There is no evidence of data gaps., There is evidence that a portion of mandated data is missing., There is evidence of widespread omissions in mandated data.) In cases where the indicator itself identifies a dataset(s) to assess against or a separate governance indicator has asked you to determine data requirements of a relevant governing framework, assess against that. In cases where there is no such identified dataset(s) or related governance indicator, assess based on the parameters laid out in the publication of the information (e.g., are some fields entirely empty when they shouldn't be?), your local knowledge (e.g., if the data is supposed to include information for all public officials, does the number of total entries look right?), and any broader research you may have done for this theme (e.g., have media articles decried the incompleteness of the data?).

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If There is evidence that a portion of mandated data is missing. or There is evidence of widespread omissions in mandated data.: Please briefly explain.

• The availability of this data has been affected by government response to COVID-19. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly describe how COVID-19 affected the availability of this data.

Extent

• How comprehensive is the data assessed for this question?
  • The data assessed covers one or more localities, but there are many other localities without available data, or with data of a lesser quality.

    Supporting questions: Which locality does this data cover?

  • The data assessed covers one or more localities, and is a representative example of the kind of data that can be found for most but not all localities.

    Supporting questions: Which localities does this data cover?

  • The data assessed provides national coverage.

Indicator Justification

Emissions, and more specifically, greenhouse gas emissions, are the iconic dataset for understanding climate change. The speed at which countries, cities, companies, and other actors reduce greenhouse gas emissions has lock-in effects, and both determining the extent of potential benefits and expanding or reducing the time available for other acts of mitigation and adaptation. Consequently, stabilizing emissions has been a key component of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since 1992, with considerable efforts put into sharing emissions data by the scientific and international communities.

Increasingly, a diverse assortment of actors seeks to understand emissions’ impacts at a more granular level. However, the greenhouse gas inventories and adaptation data countries share with the UNFCCC via their National Communications often aren't available more locally in user-friendly ways. This indicator thus examines the local or domestic availability of such data.