Estrategia de Mitigación de Emisiones de Gases de Efecto Invernadero. Estudio de Caso: Instituto Politécnico Nacional

Abstract

The following thesis is a contribution to the Strategy of Mitigation of Emissions of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) established in the Third National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) through the obtaining of the Inventory of Greenhouse Gases Emissions of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN, in Spanish). In the first part of the thesis the theoretical framework is developed, the phenomenon of global change that has become worse due to human intervention and has caused significant transformations in the climatic system giving place to the phenomenon of global warming is described. Basic concepts related to the phenomenon are defined as well as the mainest strategic components: vulnerability or the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse impacts of climate change; adaptation or the adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic effects and mitigation or the reduction of the emissions of GHG and the enhancement of the sinks of GHG In the second part of the thesis different methodologies to develop inventories of GHG are exposed. On the one hand the IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gases Inventories and on the other hand the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative of the World Resources Institute for inventories in smaller scale is described to be used in the in the case of study. As a fundamental part of the thesis the Institutional Inventory of Greenhouse Gases is obtained, which is an audit of the consumption of energy and the burning of fossil fuels in the activities of transport in the year of 2008. Based on this information, a project of mitigation of GHG emissions is developed, in other words, several measures for the reduction of emissions regarded to the consumption of energy and transport as well as some recommendations to improve the use of water, waste disposal, forestry preservation and the strengthening of research and the development of technology in the IPN.