The World Resources Institute has updated its online tool that can help businesses manage and benchmark their greenhouse gas emissions.
The latest version of WRI’s Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, CAIT 2.0, has improved functionality and other upgrades, WRI says. Originally launched this summer, CAIT 2.0 is a free portal that provides data on GHG emissions from 185 countries and all 50 US states, plus other climate data. It allows users to view, sort, visualize and download data sets for comparative analysis.
WRI says the next iteration of CAIT 2.0 allows visitors to more easily select and sort data by country, sector or type of gas, and is more readily usable on a range of mobile devices such as iPads and other large tablets.
WRI has also added a new GHG emissions data set to the online tool, with emissions totals by gas and by economic sector for 42 Annex I countries from 1990-2011, as reported by these countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Additional country GHG emissions data — previously available on CAIT 2.0 — compiles data from various government and non-government sources.
Additional new CAIT 2.0 data and functionality includes the ability to create bar, line and/or pie chart visualizations and maps (see image) to compare country or US state data; to download and share these visualizations including via social media; and to access location-specific data for a particular country, region or US state.
WRI says in the upcoming months it will add platform upgrades, expand and update its data collections and publish new research, analysis and insights on CAIT 2.0.
The international community must keep in mind the world’s total carbon budget when designing the next set of emissions-reduction commitments under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, WRI’s Kelly Levin wrote in a September blog post.
Levin’s posted the blog just days after the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that to stay below the internationally agreed-upon goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (compared to pre-industrial levels), no more than 1 trillion (1000 PcG) cumulative tons of carbon can be burned, although that does not include room for methane emissions. The report says we have already burned 531 PcG, or 53 percent of this global carbon budget.
