Counting the Hot Air: Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Accounting Principles for National GHG Emission Inventories (NEIs)

It cannot be denied that a robust national emission inventory (NEI) serves as a powerful policy tool to formulate effective mitigation policies. The literature agrees that the official principle of the UNFCCC to construct an NEI is not powerful enough to capture causes of national emissions and has agued about alternative principles to replace the existing principle. Nonetheless, since each principle offers different emission profile, and all profiles could supplement each other in policymaking process therefore, a gap remains in which conditions additional principles could be implemented to supplement the existing official principle. Therefore, a gap remains in which conditions additional principles could be implemented to supplement the existing official principle. This paper fills this gap by examining conditions in which additional principle(s) can be adopted as secondary NEIs. Sitting in a realm of policy research with Thailand as a case study, and borrowing lens of a theory of institutions defined in New Institutional Economics, the paper offers perspectives from policymaking in a developing country, which is sparse in the literature landscape. The paper’s results inform policymakers that they should prepare secondary NEIs for their own benefits in effectively governing climate change mitigation. These extensions could be achieved by collective advocacy from climate change research communities acting as an agent for change. Lastly, the paper concludes that none of currently used principles is without a flaw, and therefore it is crucial that the climate research communities continue to research for a best possible principle to count the hot air.