Greta

UBA’s Gridding Emissions Tool for ArcGIS (Greta) tool distributes annual aggregated emission data from the National Inventory Report (NIR) into a spatial raster data product. This provides an a-priori dataset with a 1 km x 1 km resolution, covering the years 1990 to the year of submission -2.

*Figure 1: Example map of gridded emissions of CO2 for the year 2022.*

*Figure 1: Example map of gridded emissions of CO2 for the year 2022.*

Under Decision 24/CP.19 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all Annex I Parties are required to prepare and submit annual National Inventory Reports (NIRs). In Germany, the German Environment Agency (UBA) and the Thünen Institute (TI) are responsible for fulfilling this obligation. The Central System Emissions (ZSE) serves as the primary data source for the NIR.

Multiple applications require reliable spatially distributed emission datasets (gridded emission). For this reason, the UBA developed the Gridding Emission Tool for ArcGIS (Greta). Greta processes national annual air pollutant and greenhouse gas emission data out of ZSE, converting them into spatially explicit, gridded datasets. These datasets, covering the period from 1990 to the year of submission minus two, are made available through the ITMS data stream.

The spatial distribution of aggregated GHG emissions is achieved using sector-specific distribution parameters on NFR sector level, which are defined and updated annually. The resulting gridded emissions data are provided at a resolution of 1 km × 1 km and can be provided according to the NFR, GNFR and SNAP nomenclature. The calculation methods applied range from Tier 1 to Tier 3, depending on the sector.