One of the challenges in reducing carbon emissions is knowing how much you are already producing. Only then is it possible to accurately plan how to make future emissions lower.
The trouble, of course, is that measuring carbon emissions in a timely fashion with high resolution is tricky. Carbon comes from a variety of sources, often measured in different ways. And the geographical resolution of this data can be poor, making it difficult to pinpoint the most polluting sources.
Neither is this data available in a high enough resolution to allow changes on the scale of cities. And many current measures take a year or more to process so can be out of date by the time they appear. None of this is conducive to detailed, long-term planning.
That looks set to the change thanks to a new initiative to compile near real-time daily estimates of the carbon dioxide emissions ...