Comparing and presenting city-level transportation CO2 emissions using GIS

•New European GIS data can simply estimate transport CO2 emissions at a city level.•Available data may be only appropriate at the ‘functional boundary level’ of city.•CO2 emissions information could be presented with respect to policy targets.

In 2011, the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) inventory of diffuse emissions became available, providing data on a range of atmospheric emissions at a 5 km resolution across Europe. The data are produced from spatially disaggregated emissions totals for countries, and must be validated before being used at a sub-national level. The UK government maintains a 1 km resolution emissions inventory based on a bottom-up methodology by which a validation is possible. The UK National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory data are used to assess at what geographic scale the new E-PRTR data might be most useful. This paper compares the two data sets and estimates city-level transportation CO2 emissions for 149 EU cities. We find that at a functional boundary level the two datasets match well.