Greenhouse Gas Accounting of Rural Agrarian Regions: The Case of San Luis Valley

Rural regions, with a dominant agricultural economic base, have a vastly different greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions profile than urban regions and hence require a unique accounting method. This paper presents a GHG inventorying methodology tailored specifically for rural agricultural regions. The methodology was applied to San Luis Valley (SLV) in south central Colorado with an intent to establish a clear emissions baseline and to analyze, in fine detail, the regions emission profile. The results show that SLV has an annual per capita emission of 30.5 MT CO(2)e while the average for the United States is about 21 MT CO(2)e. The higher per capita emissions can be attributed to the production of agricultural goods and services that are primarily exported rather than consumed in the region. Since per capita emissions might not paint an accurate picture for export based economies, we recalibrated the data on per dollar GDP basis. We find that, on this basis, SLV emissions are almost twice that of the national average indicating that, with all things being equal, agricultural activities contribute disproportionately more towards GHG emissions. In addition, through a detailed analysis we show that SLV, with its significant solar resource base, has the potential to offset much or all of their carbon emissions. The findings from this paper offer useful insights for local stakeholders to develop plans and implement policies toward GHG mitigation.