Climate accounting
National Greenhouse Gas Inventory
Definition
A national greenhouse gas inventory is a Party's official estimate of anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases, prepared with IPCC good-practice methodologies. Under the Paris Agreement (Article 13.7(a)), each Party provides a national inventory report consisting of a national inventory document and common reporting tables (CRT); Annex I Parties have submitted annual inventories since 2000, covering CO2, CH4, N2O and fluorinated gases back to 1990.
References
Article 13.7(a) basis, NID + CRT structure
annual submission practice, gas and year coverage, IPCC guidelines
Overview
What it means
The inventory is the factual core of climate accountability: estimates combine activity data (fuel burned, livestock numbers, waste landfilled) with emission factors across five sectors — energy, industrial processes, agriculture, LULUCF and waste. National inventory arrangements — the institutional, legal and procedural set-up for preparing it — determine quality.
How it is used
Inventories track NDC progress, feed the Global Stocktake, and undergo technical expert review; recalculations and key category analysis keep them consistent over time.
Why it matters
Every climate target stands or falls on inventory credibility — it is how the world knows what each country actually emits. **Note:** In-batch merges: 1815 "National inventory arrangements", 1816 "National inventory report" and 1817 "National inventory report (NIR)" → this entry.