Research Guides: ENSP 400: Capstone in Environmental Science and Policy: PG Baseline Carbon

Prince Georges Parks and Rec Equipment Fleet Baseline Carbon Emissions

To determine the current annual carbon emissions from all non-stationary fossil fuel requiring sources within the Division of Maintenance and Development of the Prince Georges County Department of Parks and Recreation and to propose a plan of action that will lower these carbon emissions by 50% over the next decade.

Maintenance Facility MNCPPC Parks and Recreation Logo with shovel

Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks
EPA has prepared the Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks since the early 1990s. This annual report provides a comprehensive accounting of total greenhouse gas emissions for all man-made sources in the United States.
Transportation Sector Data
The Department of Energy's Vehicle Technologies Office works with its national laboratories and industry partners to collect and report data on vehicle performance, research projects, and the transportation sector.
Fleet Management Tools for Local Agencies
The increasing cost of both buying and maintaining equipment and vehicles is changing the ways that local agencies manage their fleets. Budget constraints and rising costs require agency staff to employ tools and strategies for fleet management. The most effective way to optimize the life of vehicles and equipment is through good fleet management. The goal of this guidebook is to describe what that is and assess and describe the types of software and tools available for agency staff. The project included a survey of local agencies to first identify the types of equipment that make up their fleets and then to quantify how long they are keeping equipment and vehicles before replacement. Lastly, the survey asked agency staff to list the tools they use for fleet management. A matrix comparing various software tools used in Minnesota is included as well as a series of case studies.
Reducing Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation Emission Footprint through Utilizing Electric Small Equipment
This Greenest City Scholars report was prepared to support the City of Vancouver’s goal to become the Greenest City in the world by 2020. As part of the Greenest City Action Plan (GCAP) goals, the City is aiming to ‘green’ its operations by reducing GHG emissions from operations by 50% of 2007
levels and eventually eliminating fossil fuel dependency. Assuming this important target, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation (Park Board) is aiming to reduce carbon dependency by exploring the feasibility of switching from gas-powered to electric equipment.

Concept 1: Fleet vehicles

fleet vehicles
vehicle fleet
heavy duty vehicles/trucks
light duty vehicles/trucks
tractors
equipment

Concept 2: Carbon emissions

carbon emissions
carbon dioxide AND emissions
carbon dioxide AND climate change
CO2

Search strategy example:
"fleet vehicle*" AND "carbon emission*"

Quotes around a phrase tell a database to look for that exact phrase

"carbon dioxide"

The * allows for variations at the end of a word

Examples:

vehic* = vehicle OR vehicles OR vehicular

Google can limit documents to:

government when you type site:gov = federal /state / municipal / local government and government-sponsored research

For example: "carbon emissions" site:gov

For additional information on searching, see the Search Strategies under Library Overview.

Use the Search Strategies tab to create a search to locate research literature to support your analysis.

An example article:

Kawamoto, R., Mochizuki, H., Moriguchi, Y., Nakano, T., Motohashi, M., Sakai, Y., & Inaba, A. (2019). Estimation of CO2 Emissions of internal combustion engine vehicle and battery electric vehicle using LCA. Sustainability, 11(9), 2690. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/9/2690/htm

TRID
TRID is an integrated database that combines the records from TRB's Transportation Research Information Services (TRIS) Database and the OECD's Joint Transport Research Centre's International Transport Research Documentation (ITRD) Database. TRID provides access to more than one million records of transportation research worldwide. 1960-present (but there is some material from the 1950s included) The PATH Database, the largest bibliographic database on intelligent transportation systems (ITS), is now available as part of TRIS.
Materials Science & Engineering Database
Materials Science & Engineering Database covers topics such as metals, polymers, ceramics, composites, and biomaterials and deals with areas such as corrosion, molding and casting, treatment, recycling, testing, finishing, welding, and forming. In addition to scholarly publications, this resource includes patents, conference proceedings, government reports, and more.
NTRL
Covers U.S. government-sponsored research and reports from federal agencies including technical research reports, journal articles, data files, computer programs and audio-visual products. Several recent reports cover fleet vehicle analysis and recommendations.
Google Scholar
After finding research literature in other databases and refining your search strategy, use Google Scholar to find research not included in other sources.
Knovel
Knovel's collection includes over 2,000 leading reference works and databases from over 70 leading technical publishers and professional societies including AIAA, AIChE, ASME and NACE. Content collection includes material properties, process and design information, best practices, equations and formulations for specific industries and engineering disciplines.

Green Facilities Handbook by Eric A. Woodroof
ISBN: 9780881736083
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Meeting a need in the marketplace for information on how to operate a sustainable facility and reduce carbon emissions, the Green Facilities Handbook clearly explains why green business is good business and delineates practical strategies to green your operations in energy and management. The book explores issues in the greening of a facility, including janitorial considerations, fuel choices for fleets, and recycling. Additional information is provided on carbon reduction terminology, monitoring and reporting, and carbon trading as well as offset strategies. Special bonus chapters include valuable information on financing and procedures for green marketing.