TT greenhouse gas reduction plan in motion

TT is actually ahead of the game when it comes to an aspect of environmental consciousness.

It is the first country to develop a nationally determined contribution (NDC) implementation plan to achieve the NDC pledged in the Paris Agreement. It is also one of the first countries to develop, establish, and institutionalise a comprehensive monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) system in line with the rules of that agreement.

The aim of the agreement was to combat climate change, and encourage and assist countries to do what was necessary, especially in terms of greenhouse gases, for a sustainable, low-carbon future.

Kishan Kumarsingh, head of the Multilateral Environmental Agreements Unit at the Ministry of Planning and Development, said TTs NDC was submitted to the UN in 2015, before the Paris Agreement was adopted. It stipulated that TT would reduce its cumulative emissions in the transport, power generation and industrial sectors by 15 per cent, relative to a business-as-usual baseline, by 2030.

The baseline, he explained, was a projection of what would happen if there were no efforts to reduce emissions and that it took into account as the economy grew, emissions would increase.

He said when TT ratified the Paris Agreement in February 2018, the intended NDC was confirmed as its commitment. The Paris Agreement also set up a mechanism to define the rules, which were adopted in Poland in December 2018, by which it would be operationalised.

“One of the features of the Paris Agreement was the establishment of a new transparency framework. That transparency framework now is the one by which parties’ actions and their emissions would be reviewed as reported. It also requires that emissions are monitored and verified.”

The MRV would track progress towards climate targets and its core component was the knowledge management system (KMS) which was managed by the Environmental Management Authority. This allowed for sectors to input data in a central database for emissions and report it using a standardised method to measure climate change.

This month the unit launched a six-month pilot project to debug the system. It invited stakeholders to participate and trained those confirmed, including those in the private sector.

“On a voluntary basis they will be inputting data on an anonymous basis, coded so that only the entity inputting would know who they are – not their peers, anyone in another industry, nobody else.”

Kumarsingh said after the pilot the database would be refined and the unit would look at already existing legislation, such as the Air Pollution Rules under the Environmental Management Act, where it could be accommodated. In addition, he said the unit would make recommendations to formalise the mandatory reporting of greenhouse gases in the KMS.

“The objective is to be able to, on a routine basis as required under the Paris Agreement and the transparency framework, to report on the emissions on the one hand, but also to track the achievement of the NDC in those sectors...

“At some point the KMS would allow for a registry for the emissions to be made public, but without attributions, so you will never know this company is responsible for which national inventories and sectoral emissions.”

He said the unit was also working with local and international institutions such as the Climate Change Secretariat, the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute, the University of the West Indies, the University of TT, and the TT Bureau of Standards.

The unit was also in talks with a technical university in Denmark to develop a standardised certification programme for greenhouse gas inventory that could withstand international scrutiny and be offered regionally.

“It will establish a standard of competency and engender a measure of sustainability over time for anyone who might be willing to be certified in greenhouse gas inventory and establish competency, and perhaps also integrate it to some of the academic and training programmes at the tertiary education institutions.”