On 08 October 2020, Da Nang City organized an online workshop for city representatives on climate change mitigation under the IUC Asia project. Supported by UN-Habitat and CDP, the event was a follow to the previous online workshop organized on 20 July 2020. The workshop was intended to improve practical understanding of city-level greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventories and actions, particularly to be aligned with the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM) Common Reporting Framework (GCoM CRF). It was expected, the city could take actionable steps to implement mitigation concepts.
Cities committed to GCoM pledge to implement policies and undertake measures to reduce/avoid GHG emissions. Regarding GHG emission, the cities pledge to develop a community-scale GHG emission inventory; set the ambitious, measurable, and time-bound target(s) to reduce/avoid GHG emission; and adopt plan(s) addressing climate change mitigation / low emission development.
A city-wide GHG emissions inventory quantifies the amount of GHG emissions occurring due to activities in the community in a given year. CDP emphasized the importance of measuring emissions. It enabled local governments to understand the emissions contribution of different activities, determine where to best direct mitigation efforts, create strategies to reduce GHG emissions, and track their progress.
As presented by CDP, there were some GHG emissions accounting principles should be followed, among other things, inventories should be compiled on a regular basis. The cities should define the inventory boundary and record this in the inventory documentation, which includes geographic boundary, inventory year, and type of GHG.
The city-wide GHG emissions inventory should report emissions occurring from different sectors as well as distinguish between direct and indirect emissions. The GCoM CRF required further disaggregate emissions in a sub-sector into more specific categories, for example, identifying emissions associated with specific types of buildings, facilities, industries, vehicles, etc. Detailed, disaggregated data would help local governments identify emissions hotspots more precisely and design more specific mitigation actions. To avoid double-counting between local governments within the same region, the inventory should distinguish and report the following types of emissions based on where they physically occur: direct emission, indirect emission, other direct emissions. CDP highlighted the importance of data collection, particularly in the energy sector, as one of the largest contributors to GHG emissions in cities.
The session continued on how to define the mitigation target. CDP highlighted that setting city mitigation targets should start with understanding the requirement categories, including but not limited to the boundary, target type, target year, base year, baseline emission and etc.
The last session provided the overview of some practices of mitigation actions varied by specific sectors: buildings, community-scale development; energy supply, finance and economic development, outdoor lighting, mass transit; private-transport, waste and water.
