The benefits of a unified emissions database for global sustainable development

. The study of emissions in world science is devoted to various aspects of this phenomenon, various methods are demonstrated in different countries and on different continents The article reveals the experience of creating a unified database on various energy issues, including Greenhouse Emissions (Tons of CO2 Equivalent). The author provides data on emissions and other environmental problems presented by various researchers and justifies the need to create a unified database containing various aspects of environmental and energy issues. As a conclusion the article reveals the advantages of a unified emissions database for global sustainable development. From the study we can see that the data on emissions are scattered, there is no identical formula for calculation, there are no uniform requirements for disclosure of this information by companies, and the complexity of reports makes it difficult for the public to assess the social responsibility of companies. It is necessary to create a unified database of emissions, simple, understandable for users, allowing to compare data for different years, companies and spheres. Thus, the data on greenhouse gas emissions will be commensurate on various grounds and in different territories, which will help achieve the goals of sustainable development in the world.


Studies of emissions database for global sustainable development
The study of emissions in world science is devoted to various aspects of this phenomenon, various methods are demonstrated in different countries and on different continents.
Depending on the level of approach in estimating GHG emissions, there is top-down approach (used in national GHG inventories) and bottom-up approach (applied at the regional or municipal level).Data collection and processing in bottom-up approach guarantees a relatively accurate inventory at the local level, but accounting procedures can have varieties from site to site.Data aggregating and scaling in top-down approach reflects the national average statistics for an emission source but due to the little interaction between different levels not accurately reflect local conditions of emissions [1].
Finally, local level inventories are often based on a mix of bottom-up and top-down approach.The area where emissions are measured relates to the boundaries of the measurement.It includes different aspects such as activity data (data on the fuel consumption or the relevant electricity/heat production in or outside the territory); scaling data principle (GHG are allocated within the geographic boundaries of a city or out-of-boundary); allocation of emission loads on the respective sources and consumption sectors (allocation methods and references for emissions related to energy sources used to production electricity and heat) [2].
The Greenhouse Gas Inventory Protocol-Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standards is a set of internationally recognized greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting and reporting standards developed by the World Business Sustainability Association (WBCSD) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) for companies, the purpose is to truly and fairly reflect the company's greenhouse gas emissions, simplify and reduce the cost of compiling a greenhouse gas inventory, and gain wide acceptance and adoption by companies, non-governmental organizations and government agencies around the world [3].
To provide accuracy and to improve transparency of GHG inventory process, it is necessary to identify scope and sources of GHG emissions.Based on the latest tools of ICLEI, the GPC Protocol is counting the direct and indirect emissions, grouped it into three boundaries (scopes 1, 2, 3).Scope 1 including all direct GHG emissions within the city geographic boundary; Scope 2 including all indirect emissions occurred inside or and outside local authority (consumption of electricity, heat or steam); Scope 3 estimates all other indirect emissions that occur outside local authority (electricity transportation related activities, waste generation).The major sources of GHG emissions from city activities covered by GPC Protocol are following: stationary energy; transportation, industrial processes and product use, waste, agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU), other indirect emissions and sources of fugitive emissions [4].
The number of Russian authors offered the index of sustainable development characterizes processes from the following points of view: emissions of greenhouse gas, expenses of work and materials, consumption of energy resources.Such indicator can be used for an assessment of various processes.But this technique has not yet found wide application [5].
Publications cover different topics in different countries.The information is completely different, multifaceted, studies cover different layers of knowledge about emissions, which can cause difficulties for summarizing data for different countries and companies.For example, in Poland in conjunction with introduction of the duty of non-financial reporting in EU, the most important Polish mining companies have been forced to sustainable reporting.The areas often ignored in reports of mining companies are these: Emissions, Effluents, and Waste.The exception is Emissions of ozone-depleting substances by weight, which can be found in the several reports [6].
In Morocco, emissions data are divided according to the main indicators of the energy sector, for example, for the period from 2000 to 2014, according to the IEA, 72.60% of CO2 emissions are from oil, followed by 22.70% from coal and only 4.80% from natural gas.In fact, in 2014, petroleum products accounted for 62% of all types, while coal accounted for 21.26%, and natural gas -5.3%.It should be emphasized that the country imports more than 95% of fossil fuels from abroad -from 100% coal and 99.99% oil to 85% natural gas [7].
Chinese researchers report that from the analysis of the GHG emission composition of the whole plant in a northern city of China, it can be seen that the GHG directly discharged from the sewage treatment process and the indirect discharge generated by the power consumption are the main emission sources, accounting for 48% and 40.6% of the total discharge of the whole plant respectively.In direct emissions, direct CO2 emissions accounted for 84.9%, direct emissions of CH4 accounted for only 9.3%, and N2O emissions accounted for 5.8%.
Among the GHG indirect emissions generated by power consumption, the power consumption of the production process reached 98.2% of the power consumption of the whole plant, and the aeration unit consumed the largest power consumption, which was 52.4% of the power consumption of the whole plant, the power consumption of the three parts of the unit reached 89.3% of the power consumption of the whole plant.Among other indirect emissions, pharmaceutical consumption accounts for a relatively low proportion of the plant's GHG emissions [8].
Some Indonesian authors have asked the question: Do the readability of the annual report, external pressure and disclosure of social responsibility information affect the disclosure of carbon emissions?
And their answer was this: the readability of the annual report has no influence on carbon emission disclosures; this is because the more disclosure of sustainability information, the longer the content of the report, which makes reporting challenging to read and may be carried out to cover negative sustainability performance.An insignificant result of RAR on CED because the readability of the annual report is only a measurement to see the quality of the report writing for its users.It does not affect the company's level of disclosure of carbon emissions [9].
From this we can see that the data on emissions are scattered, there is no identical formula for calculation, there are no uniform requirements for disclosure of this information by companies, and the complexity of reports makes it difficult for the public to assess the social responsibility of companies.
It is necessary to create a unified database of emissions, simple, understandable for users, allowing to compare data for different years, companies and spheres.

Research of emissions database for global sustainable development 2.1 Current management discourse
Global warming and climate change are mainly attributed to the presence of a large amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.In fact, this heat-trapping gas is the major contributor to climate change among all human-influenced climate drivers.This can be associated with its abundance in the atmosphere compared to other heat-trapping gases and its large accumulation due to its long life (20% of CO2 in the atmosphere can still exist up to 800 years from the time of the emission. According to the IEA, the power sector (electricity and heat) uses 41% of global fossil fuels followed by the transportation sector 22% and the industrial sector 20%.The remaining share is consumed in other sectors like agriculture and fishery.The large share of fossil fuels in the power industry will most likely contribute to more adverse effects on the Earth's climate if no efficient measures were taken to limit its impacts.A large number of scientists believe, the further deployment of Renewable Energy technologies and Combined Heat and Power plants seems to be an ideal solution for decarbonising this sector.Moreover, the enhancement of energy measures is capable of avoiding the use of a considerable amount of these hydrocarbons and thus avoiding the resulted CO2 emissions [10], [11] In general, wealthier countries as well as cities having higher emissions per capita, due to higher rates of consumption and more energy-intensive lifestyles, likewise urbanization brings higher energy usage, although other factors such as population density and geography also have an influence [12].
Further research is needed on the impact of emissions on the environment and sustainable development.And for this, an emissions database is needed, which would allow data to be compared according to various criteria.

Materials and methods
To study the possibility and functionality of compiling a universal database, we selected a company to study its experience in this field.This kind of emissions North America data (and also the world energy data) is provided by the company Rextag, a division of Hart Energy (Hart Energy Mapping & Data Services, LLC), that collects energy data from multiple sources and checks and validates this data, compiling an extensive and integrated database on a wide range of energy assets.The company manages over 100 different databases and each is derived from a variety of sources.They are a data aggregator and utilize manual and automated processes using artificial intelligence to collect and normalize the data.They source information from State and Federal agencies, company presentations, annual reports, press releases, etc.
The company licenses this data to their customers in the convenient formats, including dynamic databases, web-browser access, and printed maps.Rextag serves all segments the energy industry: Upstream E&P, Midstream pipelines and facilities, Downstream refiners and power generators, electric and renewables, banking and finance, governments, NGOs, engineering and oil field services and more.The data services are available on a subscription or customized basis [13].
Rextag provides GIS -Geographic Information System -data in file geodatabase formats or ESRI shapefiles.These files can be opened and manipulated using ArcGIS software (a 3rd party, paid software) or QGIS (a popular free open-source alternative).Additionally, the data is accessible via the web-mapping application -Energy DataLink, which a user only needs a web browser to view.
Rextag Energy DataLink -comprehensive energy intelligence access -is one of the largest and most comprehensive databases on energy infrastructure assets in North America.The Energy DataLink database contains asset ownership, production records, processing capacities, physical locations, planned projects, acquisition records and much more [14].
We analyzed the data for conclusions about the comparability of emission data on various grounds.

Results and discussion
Consider the data on emissions in North America, which are presented by the access.First of all, the data presents last annual reported greenhouse emissions (tons of CO2 equivalent) It is interesting to observe the difference in emissions depending on the chemical element.The most common are non-biogenic CO2 emissions.It is also very important to monitor the impact of companies on Greenhouse emissions, this will help the development of social responsibility of business.We have listed only five companies with the highest Greenhouse emissions.In the same way, it is possible to track emissions in different territories, comparing them with each other both currently and retrospectively.

Unified databases for transparent assessment of emissions worldwide
Summing up, we are convinced that it is necessary to study emissions to solve the environmental problems of the world.There are different approaches to the study of greenhouse emissions, different assessment methods, different countries publish their reports, but the problem is that it is difficult to compare the data due to the difference in metrics.In addition, some companies in some countries do not publish data on certain chemicals at all.It would be useful to unify the data and bring them into a single base for comparative assessment at the level of the world community.
We showed the experience of Rextag in creating a database that combines various sources and presents data in a convenient form for comparing results for various companies, localities, years, chemical compounds, and so on.
Rextag, a division of Hart Energy (Hard Energy Mapping & Data Services, LLC), has experience in collecting energy data from a variety of sources and verifying this data, the company provides an extensive and integrated database based on a wide range of energy assets.The company has combined data from more than 100 different external databases, each of them obtained from different sources.They are data aggregators and use manual and automated processes using artificial intelligence to collect and normalize data.Among their sources of information are state and federal agencies, data from companies, public annual reports, press releases, etc.
The company processes this data and provides its customers with convenient formats, including dynamic databases, web browser access and printed maps.
This kind of experience will be useful to apply to the study of greenhouse gas emissions around the world, making the database comprehensive and free, accessible to any person, community.In order to develop a free, publicly accessible unified database around the world, it is necessary to create voluntary structures that would assume organizational and financial responsibility for this.This way we will be able to more accurately and more fully investigate the impact of greenhouse emissions on the global environment in order to achieve sustainable development goals.

Conclusions
As mentioned earlier, for emissions analytics, it is necessary to create a single database that would allow comparing indicators on various grounds in different territories and in different companies.It is important to make such a database publicly available and replenish it on the basis of fixed documents according to uniform formulas.Thus, it will be possible to more reliably monitor the state of the environment by emissions for sustainable development goals.

Table 1 .
Last Annual Reported Greenhouse Emissions by Activity Fig. 1.Last Annual Reported Greenhouse Emissions by Activity

Table 2 .
Last Annual Reported Greenhouse Emissions by Chemical

Table 4 .
Last Annual Reported Greenhouse Emissions by CategoryBased on this table, we can compare the influence of different categories of energy structures.It is obvious that a much larger amount of Greenhouse emissions is due to the operation of power plants.Annual Reported Greenhouse Emissions by Activity and years

Table 5 .
Last Annual Reported Greenhouse Emissions by Companies