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Electricity Guidance, Tool Manual to be Released
The GHG Protocol Initiative will release two publications at the beginning of July, “Guidelines for Quantifying GHG Reductions from Grid-Connected Electricity Projects” and “Designing a Customized Greenhouse Gas Calculation Tool.”
“Designing a Customized Greenhouse Gas Calculation Tool” is a guidebook on how to adapt existing GHG calculation tools to use for a specific GHG program or to more closely reflect national or regional circumstances. GHG calculation tools are customized to be made more helpful to companies or other entities that use them and to facilitate the collection of more accurate and relevant data for a particular GHG program.
In addition, the Tool Guidebook describes a stakeholder process that helps create more effective tools and builds capacity and momentum for their adoption and implementation by companies and other relevant stakeholders.
“We’ve been getting requests from GHG programs and initiatives all around the world who want to create calculation tools based on the information already available in the GHG Protocol Tools. We hope this document lays out a clear process, provides sources of technical information, and allows users to feel more confident about the outcome given the success of the customization process in India, Mexico, the U.S., etc.,” says Florence Daviet, an associate at the World Resources Institute.
Used around the world and recommended by industry, the calculation tools are recommended by industry associations, GHG programs, and governments to help develop rigorous, consistent, and credible inventories for both internal management and external reporting purposes.
The GHG Protocol Guidelines for Grid-Connected Electricity Projects provides detailed guidance on how to account for greenhouse gas emission reductions created by projects that displace or avoid power generation on electricity grids.
They can, for example, be used to estimate the GHG reductions from grid-connected renewable energy or energy efficiency projects. The guidelines were developed by WRI to supplement the GHG Protocol for Project Accounting (”Project Protocol”) and explain how the general concepts and requirements of the Project Protocol can be applied to grid-connected project activities.
“We owe a big debt of gratitude to the stakeholders who contributed their time and expertise over the last two-and-a-half years to develop these guidelines. Accounting for GHG reductions from grid electricity projects is complicated, but it’s a critically important sector for climate change. Our hope is that these guidelines can facilitate further development of effective projects and programs involving renewables, energy efficiency, and other technologies that reduce emissions from electricity generation,” said Derik Broekhoff, a senior associate at WRI.
The guidelines are designed primarily for two target audiences: project developers seeking to quantify GHG reductions outside of a particular GHG offset program or regulatory system; and designers of initiatives, systems, and programs that incorporate grid-connected GHG projects. For the former, the guidelines provide procedures to account for GHG reductions resulting from an individual project activity. For the latter, users will find guidance for deriving marginal grid emissions factors for use in determining the GHG emissions displaced or avoided by different types of project activities.
Both of these new publications will be available in hard copy and for download from the GHG Protocol website later this month.
Other publication developments:
Typology
The project typology is taking a back seat again to some sister publications but should be out for review in July. The project typology will provide project developers with project-specific information on a range of accounting issues (e.g., possible baseline candidates, secondary effects, important data sources, monitoring techniques) for all primary effects (e.g., reductions from stationary combustion, agricultural products, etc.).
Financial Sector Carbon Accounting
Work with financial institutions is continuing for this publication. The WRI team held a series of conference calls with participants in May. WRI is also planning a next round of calls in July to discuss an options paper that will be developed later this summer.