From Greenhouse Gas Inventories to Mitigation-Strategy Diagnosis: A First-Principles Mechanism-to-Lever Framework

Organizational greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories quantify attributed emissions but often provide limited guidance on the physical process that should change or the organizational pathway through which change could be pursued. We present a first-principles diagnostic method separating how emissions enter the atmosphere (HOW), where the emitting process is located (WHERE), and how the reporting organization is connected to it (MEDIATION). A necessary formation-versus-release distinction is derived from species-level mass conservation; the newly formed branch is then operationally partitioned into combustion-associated, biologically mediated, and other non-combustion abiotic physicochemical formation. Across a purposive evidence base of 675 records from 31 cases, the equal-weight case mean for HOW resolution was 81.9%; the pooled record-weighted rate was 90.7% (587/647 evaluable records). A frozen two-field procedure agreed with 613 of 647 analyst-coded assignments (94.7%; κ = 0.911), providing a restricted-field rule-concordance audit rather than independent validation. Only 128 records contained analysis-ready tCO2e values, so the study does not estimate emissions-weighted priorities or mitigation potential. The method is a pre-screening device: it excludes physically incoherent options and identifies missing process information, while feasibility, authority, cost, trade-offs, mitigation magnitude, and realized effectiveness require subsequent assessment.