Greenhouse Gas Inventory

DEQ produces a statewide inventory of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that represents North Carolina’s “carbon footprint.”  The inventory provides a high-level perspective of GHG emissions resulting from human activity and contains a detailed accounting of GHGs emitted or removed by key source categories from 1990 to 2018.  The inventory also projects North Carolina’s GHG emissions from 2019 to 2030 based on forecasted changes in fuel use, population, historical trends, and other factors.   

The 2022 update to the GHG Inventory focuses on four primary source categories:  Electricity Use; Transportation; Residential, Commercial, and Industrial Fuel Combustion; and Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) with significant changes in estimates for Transportation and LULUCF.  Significant revisions were made to the Transportation sector analysis due to newly available data and the use of an updated EPA-approved onroad vehicle emissions estimation model.  

The inventory can be used by environmental planners and energy policy makers in our State to understand past, current, and expected future GHG emissions in North Carolina.  It can also be used as a baseline to evaluate and develop GHG mitigation options for our State and predict their effect on reducing emissions in future years.