Emissions Forum: Mexico National Emissions Inventory (NEI)

Subsequent to early efforts in the 1990s by the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission and the WGA to build emissions inventory capacity in Mexico, a project to develop the first comprehensive national emissions inventory for the country of Mexico began in 2000. The Mexico National Emissions Inventory (NEI) project has financial support of the WGA, U.S. EPA, Mexico’s Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources (Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales – SEMARNAT) and National Institute of Ecology (Instituto Nacional de Ecología – INE), and the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). Representatives from these partners, along with other stakeholders from government, academia, and private sector entities on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, provide technical guidance for the development of the Mexico NEI.

The objectives of the Mexico NEI are as follows:

• Provide an improved technical basis for improved air quality analyses within Mexico and along both sides of its border;
• Support institutional capacity building to compile, maintain, and update emissions inventories;
• Comply with the Mexican Federal Environmental law mandating development and maintenance of a national emissions inventory;
• Assist with regional haze requirements in the United States; and
• Support the development of a tri-national emissions inventory of criteria pollutants for Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

The Mexico NEI has been developed in three phases. Phase I focused on organizing a technical advisory committee and developing the Inventory Preparation Plan. Phase II covered the development of the inventory for the six northern states. Phase III, which is still under development, has resulted to date in the draft final version of the inventory for the entire country (i.e., 32 states and 2,444 municipalities). The final version of the Mexico NEI will be completed in March 2006.

The WRAP’s Emissions Inventory Forum sponsored development of air quality model input files of the Phase II Mexico NEI (six northern states). This was conducted by Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG) under Task 13 of WGA Contract 30421-4.

The Mexico NEI provides the best available inventory for Mexico to WRAP, the other RPOs, and U.S. EPA for air quality modeling purposes to represent the regional haze baseline planning period 2000 to 2004. WRAP intends to use the 1999 Mexico NEI data for its “base02a” modeling runs. Also, in the absence of future year projections (including surrogates or scalars), it is the intention of WRAP to hold these emissions constant for purposes of year 2018 modeling. Other information provided under this contract will be used to develop spatial surrogates and grid the Mexican emissions. The Mexico NEI, the gridded emissions, and the underlying surrogates will be publicly available for use by the Mexican government, RPOs, U.S. EPA, and U.S. states.

The Mexico NEI files currently available contain an inventory of criteria pollutants (NOx, SOx, CO, VOC, PM10, PM2.5, and NH3) for point, area, mobile, and nonroad sources located in the northern six Mexican/U.S. border states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. Posted below are the final report of the Mexico NEI for the six northern states, the associated NIF3.0 and SMOKE/IDA files, and the draft final memo explaining how the modeling files were developed. Comments or questions regarding the Mexico NEI should be directed to Paula Fields at paula.fields@erg.com, Rich Halvey at rhalvey@westgov.org, or Tom Moore at MooreT@cira.colostate.edu.

• Development of Modeling Files for the Mexico NEI, Six Northern States, Final Memo PDF
• Mexico NEI IDA Files (Six Northern States) ZIP
• Mexico NEI NIF3.0 Files (Six Northern States) ZIP (3.5 MB)
• Mexico NEI for the Six Northern States, Final Report:
  • Table of Contents, Prologue, Executive Summary PDF
  • Final Report PDF
  • Appendices A – B PDF
  • Appendices C - H PDF