The Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) has published a new version of the greenhouse gas emission scenario tool (ALasSken). All materials in the tool have been updated to the year 2021 and the basic scenario’s defaults have been checked. As a new feature, it is possible to select 1990 as the reference year for emissions.
The most significant updates relate to the distribution defaults of vehicle propulsion types defined in the basic road transport scenario and to the consideration of the carbon dioxide emission effects of measures carried out on fields in agricultural peatlands.
The defaults for the basic road transport scenario have been aligned with VTT’s latest road transport scenario, which has resulted in changes to the electrification rate of the vehicle fleet, among other things. In addition, in the new version of the tool, the proportions of fully electric, gas-powered and ethanol-powered vehicles in the vehicle fleet vary from municipality to municipality in the basic road transport scenario for cars and vans. In previous versions, their proportions were the same regardless of the municipality.
The change arose because regional differences in the rate at which these propulsion types are becoming more common can be seen in the vehicle registration data. On average, the fastest transition to fully electric vehicles is taking place in urban municipalities, especially in southern Finland. In small rural municipalities, on the other hand, the basic scenario assumes that the development of electrification is clearly more moderate than in urban areas.
In February 2023, measures were added to the tool for agricultural lands located on peatlands that could affect the amount of greenhouse gas emissions (methane and nitrous oxide) attributed to the agricultural sector. At that time, carbon dioxide emissions calculated for the land use sector were not included in the tool, as the ALas calculation system does not include emissions and sinks from the land use sector.
In the version of the tool that has now been released, the impact of measures taken on peatland fields on carbon emissions is shown in the “Carbon offsets” section of the tool. The tool automatically calculates the carbon emission impacts and they can optionally be included in the municipality’s emissions scenario as carbon offsets of the land use sector.
In addition to the new version of tool, the old version will continue to be maintained until 30 April 2024.
Additional information
Santtu Karhinen, Senior Research Scientist, Finnish Environment Institute, tel. +358 29 525 1889, firstname.lastname@syke.fi