ICELI and Cities' Carbon Footprints

Over the last few months, I have had the opportunity to take a look at cities' measures of their carbon footprints.  Just as the carbon footprint calculators for individual people and households are pretty uneven in their methodologies, so too are the carbon footprint estimates for whole cities.  Although the latter have much different methods of estimation, what struck me is how much variation there is in the methods, and the quality and availability of the appropriate information needed to produce accurate estimates. 

I know that when cities' mayors sign up to join the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) Program they agree to spearhead a carbon inventory project. Yet I'm surprised at how few of the signatories have actually accomplished this to date. There are some really good efforts, such as New York City and Toronto, for example.  But most cities do not seem to have made the effort to try to measure their actual carbon emissions.

But now ICLEI is about to issue a complete set of protocols and methodologies for measuring carbon and producing the inventory.  It is in the testing phase right now, and can be downloaded from the ICLEI web site during the "exposure period."  See the ICLEI GHG Emissions Analysis Protocol web site for more information.

This should present a huge improvement in the quality and availability of greenhouse gas emissions information for cities.  It should also make it possible for cities that don't already have the internal expertise to devise a carbon emission inventory methodology to standardize with other cities so that comparisons over time and across cities will be possible.

Have you taken a look at the ICLEI protocol?  How does it look to you?  Is this as much of a breakthrough as I think it is?  Please post your thoughts on this here.