As part of the Great Plains Institute’s role as a nonpartisan facilitator of consensus-based agreements, we often benefit from sharing and utilizing impartial scientific data and technical reports to inform the policymaking process.
By basing the conversation around peer-reviewed, published scientific results, stakeholders and decision makers can develop a shared understanding on critical issues. By traveling a learning curve together, stakeholders and decisions makers can have a more informed conversation that leads to more effective results. In this role, GPI has acted both as the disseminator of scientific data and, as you may have seen on this blog, the source of new analysis and research.
One of the most useful tools for GPI to assess the climate impact of energy policy decisions is the GREET Model for lifecycle greenhouse gas assessment. GPI has partnered with the creators of the model, Argonne National Laboratory, for a number of years in a collaboration where GPI not only benefits from the expertise of scientists and engineers at the lab, but is also in a unique position to provide our real world experience and pressing data needs as feedback for future model revisions.
In our years of working together, Argonne and GPI recognized the opportunity to share our experience with the rest of the world by combining GPI’s expert knowledge of GREET with its outsider perspective of how best to communicate technical information to the public. To do this, GPI has spent the past year producing a series of YouTube tutorials on how to use the GREET model for both beginners and experts.
From assessing the carbon benefit of biofuels or electric vehicles, to calculating power plant emissions, if it uses energy, the GREET model will calculate its full lifecycle GHG intensity. Through GPI’s work on creating easy to understand video lessons, it’s now easier than ever to jump into the world of lifecycle assessment.
You can check out the videos at the YouTube page, and a sample playlist of the videos is embedded below:
