02-18-19 Joint Health and Public Safety and Utilities

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CITY OF SOUTH BEND 1 OFFICE OF THE CLERK reducing opportunities that we have, which could be a specific source of emissions, a specific sector of our community or a particular fuel type. So, it truly helps us narrow in on where the best impacts are. There are some ways a greenhouse gas inventory is not particularly valuable, and I want to make sure you are aware of those so that you don't have unreasonable expectations of what we can do with this information. It is not great for comparing between cities. Cities are in different climate zones, and have different industrial and infrastructural capacities in their communities that affect emissions. So, for example, we don't have a landfill within the City of South Bend. We don't have the level of heavy industry that another community in the region might have. So,it is difficult to compare apples to apples between communities. It is better used internally as a benchmark. I also want to make sure we understand that emissions are estimated from the activities. So,you really aren't going to be able to know exactly what the emissions will be because the climate is such a complex system. We won't be able to pinpoint specific results of actions. It is a complex system and we can follow the trends, but emissions estimates are just estimates. She went on,I want to talk a little bit about the scale of measurement.There are two(2)approaches that are commonly used. One (1) is more of a bottom-up which estimates emissions from our known activities, like those that we track with our organization's business management systems. How many therms were on our gas bills last year? How many miles did each City vehicle travel? The operational inventory is really only a subset of emissions overall. You would have to add up the City of South Bend, Beacon Health, Lippert and each resident and business in town, their inventories,if we really wanted to add it into the inventory. It is just not feasible to get that number. So, the top-down procedure estimates emissions from activity in the community relies on partners who provide data. Sometimes it's data and sometimes it's estimates. Sometimes it is based on models. So, it is more of an estimate than what you can do for your internal inventory. We completed our operational inventory in 2016 for 2015 data. And you completed our community- scale inventory this past summer for 2017 data. So, we have taken a crack at both of these and have some initial numbers to share. She continued, I want to give a little bit of background on scopes of gases focusing on where we can make the most impact because a scope really does indicate the amount of control and influence an organization has over their emissions. So,scope one(1)is direct emissions.Those are emissions sources that are owned or controlled by the City which include vehicles and fuel burning equipment in our facilities. Scope two (2) is called indirect emissions because that is electricity generation. We control how much electricity we use but we do not control how that electricity is generated in most cases. We do have a couple small solar installations,but primarily,we don't tell I&M how to run their power plant. Then, scope three (3) are things that are really difficult things for the City to control because we don't have ownership or control over it. Scope three (3) is usually, actually, someone else's scope one (1). So, a lot of times, an inventory does not try to capture it because someone else may already be capturing it. For example,you can see(referencing the presentation)that one (1)of the scope three(3) uses is employee and business travel. If you're flying with American, those would be the City's scope three (3) emissions because our employee is flying on American,but that would be American Airline's scope one(1)emissions because they are the ones burning the jet fuel. She went on, So, we really want to focus on scope one (1) and scope two (2) and that is what we have done both in the operational inventory and the community inventory. I want to talk also a little bit about which gases are included, just so that you know that there is some stuff that we don't really talk about in the framework of community inventories. So, these three (3) gases are EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f 574.235.9173 TTD 574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 16