OECD methodology to estimate SEEA Air Emission Accounts

This working paper updates the existing OECD methodology for estimating Air Emission Accounts (AEAs) to enhance their comprehensiveness and international comparability. The new methodology draws primarily on data from national greenhouse gas emission inventories, a range of auxiliary data sources including Physical Energy Flow Accounts, as well as OECD experimental estimates of emissions from air and maritime transport. It improves the quality and granularity of estimates by economic activity (A*64 industry breakdown), expands the geographical coverage to all OECD countries, and extends the temporal scope of the estimates (1990 to year t-2). It also widens the emission coverage to include international air and maritime transport in line with emission boundaries of the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA), and incorporates the territory–residence adjustments to comply with the SEEA Central Framework (SEEA-CF). These improvements complement ongoing international methodological efforts to refine AEA estimates, such as those developed by the IMF and Eurostat, by drawing more extensively on country-specific data and achieving closer alignment with the SEEA-CF.