Joint IEA UNEP UNFCCC Workshop on Energy Data for Climate Policy

The energy sector is key to overall national development and plays a fundamental role to combating climate change. The success of national energy and climate policies will rely on the ability of national systems to establish and maintain appropriate tracking procedures – which optimize data production and exchange across stakeholders from relevant national institutions.

The UNFCCC has well established rules for data reporting. Each Party is required to report to the Conference of the Parties (COP) information on its emissions by sources and removals by sinks of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol, among other information relevant to the achievement of the objective of the Convention. Furthermore, the Paris Agreement establishes an Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF), which builds on the current Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system under the Convention.

As national GHG inventories constitute one of the core components of the information to be communicated under the ETF, with energy beings one of key sectors for all countries. Given the challenges experienced by the majority of developing countries with regard to GHG inventories, there is a need to continue building capacities to prepare adequately for reporting under the ETF.

As the energy statistics collected in support of energy policy also serve inventory compilation - generally dealt with by a different institution - national systems need to ensure that appropriate institutional arrangements establish a coordinated approach to data collection and exchange. Strong links will ultimately allow to optimize the use of resources allocated to data at national level, enhance comparability of different datasets, and strengthen the overall data transparency and data quality of energy statistics and GHG inventories, with benefits to all data providers and all data users, nationally and internationally.

Such cooperation is encouraged both at the policy level and at the operational level among experts. International organizations help framing coordinated approaches to data reporting, contributing to strengthening national collaboration. The IEA has a consolidated workstream with the UNFCCC to enhance synergies towards this goal and is committed to promote the message across its members and beyond.

The workshop will discuss requirements on energy data for climate reporting and represent an opportunity for focal points from across institutions, both working on energy statistics and GHG inventories, to highlight good practices as well as barriers in establishing a coherent set of relevant data. The ultimate objective is for countries to develop the best possible basis for effective national mitigation policy development and for enhanced transparency in reporting under the Paris Agreement.

The workshop will be informed by a preliminary survey to focal points to better assess the status of national level regarding data production, and potential benefits of international collaboration.

The discussion will also help inform a more in-depth three-day training event planned for the second half of 2021 (Joint Global Training Workshop) to be held at the IEA Headquarters, organized jointly by the IEA, the UNFCCC secretariat, and UNEP, with support from the IPCC. The broader workshop will aim at strengthening the technical capacities of developing countries, with a view to assisting them to prepare high quality national GHG inventories for the energy sector. The broader workshop will cover energy statistics requirements, methodology for inventory compilation and broader tracking of mitigation actions within the energy sector.

The workshop will be held virtually, and two identical events will be organized to take into account the different time zones of the group of targeted countries:

• 25 November 2020, 5pm CET
• 27 November 2020, 9.30am CET