Greenhouse Gasses Measuring, Reporting, and Verification has been Mentioned as Critical to the achievement of the Ethiopian National Determined Contribution (NDC).

In its ambitious Greenhouse Gas emissions target submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) back in 2015, Ethiopia has pledged to cut its emission via 255 MtCO2eq by 2030.

It is in the 21^st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change back in the year 2015 that Parties adopted the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

The Paris Climate Change Agreement is anticipated to hold the global average temperature to be fine below 200c pre-industrial revolution level and to continue until it is reduced to 1.50c.

To meet this previously gated global ambitious target, member countries including Ethiopia have done and are expected to submit their ambitious targets through their Nationally Determined Contribution to cut emissions.

However, planning alone doesn’t matter to the achievement of the target of it. It needs the integrated work of other countries. But also measuring, reporting, and verifying of the actual performance data as per the Independent Policy Complaints Commission (IPCC) guideline is crucial to all member countries in the global arena.

In doing accordingly, one country can determine the progress towards the implementation of both the convention and the Paris climate change agreement to futile the common target of the Paris agreement.

Even though, to achieve these ambitious goals of the globe repeatedly doing technical capacity building training of experts working on Measurable, Reportable, and Verifiable (MRV) in line with ministries, has needed said Negusu Lema, Director-General of Climate Change and Bio-diversity division at the Ethiopian Environment, Forest and Climate Change Commission.

He stated that MRV helps to understand and track the progress of carbon gas emission with individual or collective commitments or pledges to the global community to enhance accountability in quantified information measured and reported to build assurance.

He also prolongs his remarks by saying that MRV does provide background information on the scope and ambition of national climate responses. For that end the director-general said: “The sectoral technical team needs to build its capacity in order to perform their responsibility as per the IPCC 2006 guideline.”

The repeatedly provided training should continue until the achievement of the ambitious global, continental, and country-level goals with the focus on different thematic areas and approaches to help the team better examine the science and its applicability.

According to the early reports of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), Ethiopia is amongst the first few Least Developed Countries that has submitted the most ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to overcome the negative impacts of climate change to the UNFCCC in 2015.

In actual fact, Ethiopia’s NDC has been designed based on its Climate-resilient green economy strategy (CRGE) which succeeded in 2011.

As it was clearly mentioned in the first NDC which was launched in 2017, Ethiopia has been committed by itself to tackle climate change through a transformative economic development approach that focuses on low-carbon growth, poverty reduction, climate resilience, and a green economy development driven by leading to the country’s sustainability.

In this prospect, over the last 9 years, it has achieved remarkable outcomes in the endeavor to build a green and resilient economy, and society. In this regard, it is worth mentioning that Ethiopia’s NDC has been an integral part of the national development plans like other member countries, Negusu noted.

After years of practical implementation of the plan, it existed relevant to review the national plan in a way that it was a suit and that it is a matter-of-fact to the overall existing situation of the nation.

To this end, internationally recognized consultants have highbred and assessed the progress of the plan. This was acceptable not only to go through the stakeholder consultations, but it was highly examined by the commission’s technical working group and the participation of key stakeholders as well around.

Each training given at a different time for the stakeholder and consultation has gate constructive feedback from all actors to finalize the document in development for a better achievement of the country’s gas emission.

In general greenhouse gases trap heat and make the planet warmer. Human activities are responsible for almost all of the increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last 150 years.

The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the State is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation. Those activities are the reasons that are repeatedly mentioned in each member countries’ annual report. And the estimates total national greenhouse gas emissions and removals associated with human activities across the national and global levels.

Changes to regional climates brought on via global warming could make it. So that areas such as Ethiopia and the other continental countries that are currently considered ideal for wind and solar power would be less viable in the future, as new studies suggest.

The higher surface temperatures will lead to more moisture, aerosols, and particulates in the atmosphere, which may result in less solar radiation and more cloudy days.

The study is the first to assess the day-to-day reliability of wind and solar energy under climate change to avoid the impact sustainably.

While wind and solar power is a leading form of renewable energy, many experts at different times suggested that changes to regional climates brought on by global warming could make areas currently considered ideal for wind and solar renewable energy production less viable in the future.

Princeton-based researchers recently published in the journal Nature Communications the first study to assess the day-to-day reliability of solar energy under climate change.

The team used satellite data and climate models to project how sunlight reaching the ground would be affected as warmer global temperatures alter the dynamics and consistency of the Earth’s atmosphere.

The study found that higher surface temperatures and the resulting increase in the amount of moisture, aerosols, and particulates in the atmosphere may result in an overall decrease in solar radiation and an uptick in the number of cloudy days.

Now, climate change is disturbing the usual dynamics of the atmosphere and the regularity of the solar radiation reaching the planet’s surface.

“The novelty of our approach was to point out that in some places there is going to be more uncertainty in day-to-day variability,” Negusu added.

He previously reported that climate models underestimate the cooling effect of the daily cloud cycle. It determines the risk of flooding or drought effects.

Then there is the issue of soils drying, which may be even more important. As temperatures and atmospheric disorder increase in waterless regions such as dry soils potentially lead to greater amounts of dust and atmospheric aerosols that would diminish solar radiation.

In addition to the researchers’ findings were less consistent, some models showed more solar radiation and lower intermittency in the future, while others showed less solar radiation and higher intermittency. These results illustrate the challenge of trying to predict the reliability of solar energy in an uncertain future.

The policymakers and people in the energy industry can take advantage of this information to more efficiently design and manage photovoltaic facilities.

“The policymakers should identify efficient solutions for different locations where intermittency could occur, but at an acceptable level. A variety of technologies such as power storage, or power-operation policies such as smart restriction, load shaping or geographical dispersion are promising solutions.”

To examine climate persistency specifically, the number of consecutive sunny or cloudy days is important for solar power. They also are exploring how clouds could affect the effectiveness of tree planting as a climate mitigation strategy.

In general, trees absorb not only carbon dioxide but also solar energy, which would raise surface temperatures. A resulting increase in cloud coverage could change current estimates of how effective trees would be in reducing atmospheric carbon.

Source: The Ethiopian Herald 

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