Tag: greenhouse gases

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Greenhouse Gas Emissions Brazil 2012

SEEG Sistema de Estimativas de Emissões de Gases de Efeito Estufa (Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals Estimates System) is an initiative of the Observatório do Clima (Climate Observatory) in Brazil.

This Sankey diagram on the SEEG web page (in Portuguese) shows greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Brazil in 2012.

SEEG_Brasil_sankey_emissoes_porsetor

On the left are the emitters by sector: land transformation, livestock farming, energy generation, industrial processes and waste sector. Emissions are grouped in the middle column by activity: agriculture, industry, transport and other. The third column is a detailed breakdown of the activity sectors.

The agricultural sector contributed 64% of Brazil’s GHG emissions in 2012, with most likely methane (CH4) from livestock breeding and CO2 release from deforestation as the major sources.

Emissions are shown in Mt CO2-e[quivalents], even though the caption says differently. Overall greenhouse gas emissions were 1490 Mt CO2e (or 1.49 bn tonnes CO2e). Detailed data is available on the website, so this can be seen as the consolidated overview of GHG emissions.

More recent GHG data for 2017 from Brazil has been published at an event in November 2018 in São Paulo, but I couldn’t find a Sankey diagram (yet).

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Iran GHG Emissions from Energy Sector

Following up to my two previous posts on Iran’s Energy Flows and Iran’s Energy production and consumption, here is the third Sankey diagram I could find in the report ‘Iran and World Energy Facts and Figures, 2012’ published by Ministry of Energy (MOE) of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It is on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by the energy sector in the country

iran_ghg_emissions_2012

This is interesting, as the setup is reversed in comparison to the typical energy flow diagrams we all know. Here, the consuming sectors are on the left, alongside the energy generation sector itself. The middle section of the diagram sorts the arrows by energy carrier that causes the GHG emissions: natural gas contributes 53% (orange) and petroleum products 45.6% (blue). The third column shows a breakdown into the gases CO2, CH4 and N20.

No absolute values are given in the diagram, the magnitude of the flow amount to 100%. However the detailed values can be found in the accompanying tables in the report: carbon dioxide with 556,866,000 tons, methane 57,000 tons and nitrous oxide 11,600 tons (all values for 2012). Mind that these are absolute values, so in order to understand the impact on climate change one would have to multiply with the respective emission factors for methane and laughing gas and normalize them to kg CO2-equivalents.

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Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the U.S.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) publishes an annual report on the Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the US economy. The executive summary of the 2005 report shows a Sankey diagram on page xv.

This Sankey diagram shows on the left side the different sources of CO2 (mainly combustibles), and on the right hand side the industrial sectors (residential, commercial, industrial and transport) that contribute to the CO2 release. Emissions are in million ton CO2-equivalents.

The original Sankey diagram from the report has been reproduced with the e!Sankey software, and is shown below. Footnotes have been omitted, for full detail please refer to the original source.

ghg_us2005_v02