Plejdrup, M.S., Nielsen, O.-K. & Nielsen, M. 2021. The Danish emission inventory for fugitive emissions from fuels. Aarhus University, DCE – Danish Centre for Environment and Energy, 61 pp. Scientific Report No. 463 http://dce2.au.dk/pub/SR463.pdf

Summary

The Danish Centre for Environment and Energy (DCE), Aarhus University prepares the national inventories of emissions to the air and carries out the reporting to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and to the UNECE CLRTAP (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on Long-range Transboundary Pollutants) on an annual basis. Furthermore, the greenhouse gas emission inventory is reported to the EU’s Climate Monitoring Regulation and the Kyoto Protocol, while the air pollution inventory forms the basis of the reporting under the NEC directive (National Emission Ceilings for certain atmospheric pollutants).

The national emission inventories covers five sectors as defined in the international guidelines and reporting templates (IPCC, 2000; IPCC, 2006; EMEP/EEA, 2019). “Fugitive emissions from fuels” is a subsector in the Energy sector. This report document the methodologies used in the emission inventory for fugitive emissions from fuels, including information on activity data, emission factors and emissions for the time series 1990-2019. This report updates the version published in 2015 (Plejdrup et al., 2015).

The fugitive sector covers emissions from extraction, handling, storage, treatment, transmission and distribution of solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels, and from venting and flaring. Among the major sources in the fugitive sector are offshore installations in upstream oil and gas production, and the refineries.

The total Danish GHG emission in 2019 is 43 971 kt CO₂ equivalents (CO₂ eqv.) excluding Land use, Land use change and forestry (LULUCF). In the same year the GHG emission from the energy sector is 29 995 kt CO₂-eqv., corresponding to 68 %. The majority of the GHG emissions is in the energy sector and stems from fuel combustion in energy industries and in transport. The fugitive sector accounts for 1.0 % of the GHG emissions from the energy sector as a whole.

Besides the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) the inventory of fugitive emissions from fuels includes emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen oxide (NO_x), non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC), carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM), black carbon (BC), heavy metals (HM), and persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Emissions of particulate matter are estimated in three size fractions; total suspended particulate matter (TSP) and particles with an aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm (PM₁₀) and less than 2.5 μm (PM_2.5). The fugitive sector contribute 8.5 %, 7.3 % and 1.2 % to the national total emissions of SO₂, NMVOC and BC, respectively. For the remaining pollutants, the fugitive sector contributed only little to the national total (< 0.1 %).