CARMA Revisited: An Updated Database of Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Power Plants Worldwide - Working Paper 304

The Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) database provides information about the carbon dioxide emissions, electricity production, corporate ownership, and location of more than 60,000 power plants in over 200 countries. Originally launched in 2007, CARMA is provided freely to the public at www.carma.org and remains the only comprehensive data source of its kind. This paper documents the methodology underpinning CARMA v3.0, released in July 2012.

CARMA v3.0 includes a significant upgrade in the quantity and quality of geographic data, including standardized geopolitical information for nearly all facilities. High-precision coordinates are now available for 10 percent of plants (covering 30% of global CO2 emissions) and approximate coordinates are available for an additional 70 percent of facilities. The new version also lays the technical groundwork for future expansion to greenhouse gases other than CO2, offering potential improvement in continental-scale modeling of the environmental and health consequences of conventional pollutants.