Sunday, August 03, 2008

CARMA - Carbon Monitoring for Action

I saw this website "CARMA - Carbon Monitoring for Action" in 2007 and since it was made public, the databases, information sharing, and the presentation has improved and changed.

From the website:
"At its core, Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) is a massive database containing information on the carbon emissions of over 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies worldwide. Power generation accounts for 40% of all carbon emissions in the United States and about one-quarter of global emissions. CARMA is the first global inventory of a major, emissions-producing sector of the economy.

CARMA also aggregates data on individual plants to the level of operating companies, parent corporations, and several geographic entities (continents, countries, states/provinces, and cities worldwide, with additional reports for U.S. metro areas, congressional districts, and counties). The database is updated quarterly to reflect changes in ownership, construction, renovation, planned expansions, and plant retirements. CARMA is meant to be a repository of the best available information on power sector carbon emissions.
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According to the website, India currently emits 583 million tons of CO2 from 2,147 power plants, of which 377 are tagged as red alerts, producing 597 million MWh of electricity. Readers can also download (and analyze individually), the database of the power plants, along with fuel consumption (by type) and power generation capacity for each country.

Dr. David Wheeler, Senior Fellow at Center for Global Development, announced recently that the CARMA 2.0 will be released later this summer, with improved methodologies for CO2 calculations and better geographical database.

Working paper by Wheeler et al., on CARMA calculations and methodology is available @ "Calculating CARMA: Global Estimation of CO2 Emissions from the Power Sector"

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