Policy-based greenhouse gas mitigation tracking & institutional framework development under Thailand's NAMAs in energy sector

Abstract

Copyright © 2017, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l.. The first Thailand's long term greenhouse gas mitigation roadmap, so called Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), was pledged during COP-20. By using 2005 as a base year, this voluntary based NAMAs aimed to reduce national GHG emissions in the range of 7 to 20 % (or 24 to 75 million t of CO2) below the energy and transport sectors BAU by 2020. This paper described the establishment of multi-ministry institutional framework of GHG emission reduction monitoring structure, for the main purpose of approve and verify the emission reduction results from mitigation policies and measures as stated in NAMAs. The tracking was started from the selection of GHG reduction policies and measures by using multi-level criteria setting. The measuring, reporting, and verification (MRV) methodology and process including the applicable coefficients and emission factors are also investigated and developed by the working group under this framework. From the results, we found that there are five national energy and transport policies and measures have been selected; i.e. (i) renewable energy for electricity from natural energy resources, (ii) renewable energy for electricity from bioenergy resources, (iii) biodiesel consumption in transport sector. (iv) ethanol consumption in transport sector, and (v) supply side energy efficiency improvement in coal fired power plant. We applied the disclosed verified national energy data to calculate the GHG emission reduction and the result shows that 14.34 MtCO2e (or 3.90 % of roadmap target) have been reduced from all five policies and measures in the year 2013. We can conclude that the MRV processes including monitoring of renewable energy and energy efficiency improvement activities are very important for GHG mitigation tracking. However, the fully accepted and well-establishment of the multiministry institutional framework structure are the key for long-Term tracking success.