@article{1446,
  author = {Daniel Moore and Nathan Li and Cuihong Song and Jun-Jie Zhu and Hongming Yi and Lei Tao and James McSpiritt and Vladislav Sevostianov and Lars Wendt and Nidia Rojas-Robles and Francesca Hopkins and Zhiyong Ren and Mark Zondlo},
  title = {Comprehensive assessment of the contribution of wastewater treatment to urban greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions},
  abstract = {<p>Population growth and urbanization are driving the demand for centralized wastewater treatment, a primary source of N<sub>2</sub>O and CH<sub>4</sub> emissions. We have conducted the first comprehensive assessment of CH<sub>4</sub>, N<sub>2</sub>O and NH<sub>3</sub> emissions across diurnal, day-to-day and seasonal scales at 96 US water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) that collectively treat 9\% of US centralized wastewater. Facility-level emissions were scaled to the national level using a probabilistic approach. Here we show that the measured emissions were 1.9 times higher for N<sub>2</sub>O (95\% confidence interval (CI): 1.3{\textendash}2.6) and 2.4 times higher for CH<sub>4</sub> (CI: 1.9{\textendash}2.9) than current US inventories. Considering the cumulative climate impacts of CH<sub>4</sub> and N<sub>2</sub>O, the top 10\% of emitters contributed 74\% of the carbon footprint, with the top half contributing 98\%, highlighting priorities for mitigation. Although detected at only a small fraction of facilities, measurements of NH<sub>3</sub> emissions (86 kt yr<sup>-1</sup> in the USA) suggest WRRFs are an overlooked source of urban NH<sub>3</sub>. Finally, the contribution of centralized wastewater treatment to global greenhouse gas emissions will increase 2- to 17-fold by 2100 under future scenarios. Overall, greater consideration of wastewater treatment emissions is needed to reach sustainability targets.</p>},
  year = {2025},
  journal = {Nature Water},
  month = {10/2025},
  publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC},
  doi = {10.1038/s44221-025-00490-z},
  language = {en},
}