A Comprehensive Provincial Air Emissions Inventory to Support AEMERA, ESRD and the AER

1. A Comprehensive Provincial Air Emissions Inventory to Support AEMERA, ESRD and the AER Richard Melick Emissions Inventory Scientist Air Policy

2. Provincial Emissions Inventory • Goal: • Account for air emissions of key pollutants from all significant sources, and provide sufficiently detailed and accurate data to meet key GOA business and other user requirements.

3. Provincial Emissions Inventory • Principles: • Tell us how much of what came from where, at specific timescales, and how emission levels are changing. • Provide good spatial and regional information. • Use consistent measurement and estimation methodologies, and indicate when changes have occurred. • Provide excellent documentation of the data sources, and how the numbers were derived (activity data, EF, model used, assumptions, etc). • Sufficiently detailed to meet the key business and user requirements. • Open and transparent, central access for (at least) the three agencies.

4. Why Do We Need EI? • Help us understand: • The sources that contributing and in what amounts. • The largest sources and sectors. • Substances and quantities being released in specific LUF regions, CMAs, CSDs, cities, etc. • How we compare to other jurisdictions. • Whether emissions have been increasing, decreasing, or staying the same.

5. Why Do We Need EI? • How emissions will change in the future (inputting into projections). • How ambient concentrations (AQ) will change in the future. (inputting detailed air emissions data, etc into AQ models). • The existing industrial equipment and control technologies already in place. • The opportunities for improvement (largest contributors, old equipment, poor performers, emerging technologies, etc).

6. Why Do We Need EI? • Scientific analysis. • Examining various management & policy options and developing associated policies. • Help support or justify decisions being made. • Back-up Alberta’s position on regional, provincial and national AQ management issues.

7. Why Do We Need EI? • Regional planning and cumulative effects. • Data requests, public reporting, information products, web portals, etc. • Improving consistency of EIAs, EPEA Approval applications and renewals. • Help us understand and manage the air. • Overall, environmental assurance

8. Some of the Purposes of AEMERA • Provide credible scientific data regarding the condition of the environment (likely need data on what is being released into the air). • Ensure data are available and reported to the public in an open and transparent manner (difficult to do without an inventory). • Plan, co-ordinate and conduct environmental monitoring (likely requires some emissions information). • Collect, store, manage, analyze and evaluate monitoring data (key functions of an emissions inventory). • Report on the status and trends related to the condition of the environment on the basis of the evaluation of the data collected (likely requires emissions data). • Develop standards respecting environmental monitoring (may require some emissions data).

9. Provincial Emissions Inventory for AEMERA • For AEMERA, emission inventories are likely needed to: • Provide critical scientific data; • Monitor and track emissions and emitters; • Answer questions and respond to issues; • Support cumulative effects management and LUF regional planning; • Undertake regional evaluations and analysis, assess airshed capacity; • Support and evaluate the ambient monitoring network; • Support scientific assessments; • Develop standards, directives, guidance documents; and • Report, communicate and inform Albertans.

10. Components of the Provincial Inventory Non-Industrial Sources Industrial Sources ESRD Regulated Facilities -> EPEA Approved Non-Industrial Area Sources ESRD Regulated Facilities -> EPEA Code of Practice Mobile Sources Alberta Air Emissions Inventory AER Regulated Facilities –> EPEA Approved Wild Fires AER Regulated Facilities –> Non-EPEA Approved Biogenics

11. Emission Inventory Functions • Inventory planning (determining scope, timelines, data sources, available resources, etc); • Data collection (e.g., AMD Annual EI Reporting, etc); • Inventory and industry reporting QA/QC; • Data formatting and importing; • Data storage; • GIS; • Inventory documentation; • SOPs; • Emission estimation and modelling; • Spatial allocations; • Temporal and speciation breakdowns; • Data gap analysis; • Research and addressing gaps;

12. Emission Inventory Functions • Emissions evaluation / analysis (turning data into useful information); • Internal and external reporting (web content, reports, summaries, Factsheets, etc); • Emissions indicators (e.g., the NRE Pod air emissions performance metric); • Policy work (on things like reporting thresholds, pollutants, quantification methods, overall reporting requirements, etc); • Developing regional inventories and data subsets; • Inputs into photochemical models; • Datasets/inputs for regulatory dispersion modelling; • Inputs into emission forecasts/projections; • Inputs into regional plans, BLIERs/AQMS, CASA work, CCME, EWG, etc; • Providing support and knowledge for decision making; • Auditing of industrial data submission; Etc.

13. Questions We Need to Answer • Do emission inventories in any way fall within the role of AEMERA? • Which monitoring type (Ambient Environmental Monitoring, Baseline Monitoring, Effects or Effects-based Monitoring, Compliance Monitoring, Performance-Based Monitoring) would emissions inventories be categorized as? Some would definitely be compliance, but it isn’t clear what everything else (non-approved industrial and non-industrial) would be. • Where should the provincial emissions inventory reside? • Which agency should be in charge of it? • What information should it include (sources, pollutants, level of detail, etc)?

14. Questions We Need to Answer • Which agency will look after the AMD emissions inventory reporting program (e.g., review industry submissions, do follow-up, update guidance documents, updating reporting requirements, maintain forms, auditing, import reported information into a database, etc)? • How will we account for non-EPEA approved AER facility emissions, not subject to AMD emissions inventory reporting? • Which agency will look at non-industrial sources? • Which agency will bring all the different pieces of the inventory together, evaluate/review it and address issues? • Which agency will carry out required GIS work? • Which agency will prepare regional inventories?

15. Questions We Need to Answer • Which agency will look at and report on provincial and regional trends, major sources, overall results of the inventory, etc? • Which agency will use the emissions inventory to identify issues requiring additional or revised environmental policy actions? • Which agency will provide emissions datasets and input files for internal air modelling and projections? • Which agency will develop a standard starting emissions dataset for use in regulatory dispersion modelling for EIAs? • Which air emission policy pieces (AMD, Regs, guidance documents) fall within each of the three agencies? • Which overall system pieces (data collection, data evaluation, data storage, data dissemination, etc) fall within each of the three agencies?