What is a Greenhouse Gas Assessment?
A GHG assessment involves identifying all the potential sources of GHG emissions and quantifying those emissions. GHG assessments can be done for companies as well as products. Emissions can be categorized into Scope 1, Scope 2, or Scope 3. Scope 1 are direct emissions coming from sources that the company directly controls and/or operates. Scope 2 are indirect emissions arising from utilities, primarily electricity but also steam, district heating, and/or district cooling. Scope 3 are the emissions that come from all other sources, and these are further categorized into upstream and downstream emissions.
What is Life-Cycle Assessment?
LCA is sustainability assessment tool that is used to quantify several different environmental impacts simultaneously for all of the stages of a product's life-cycle. While it is similar in theory to a GHG assessment, it includes other impacts such as resource consumption, water scarcity, toxicity, and ozone depletion potential, for example. LCA is currently the only way to make verifiable and transparent environmental claims about a product, such as is defined by Environmental Product Declarations and environmental labeling guidelines.
Because the Kyoto Protocol will end soon and acknowledging that GHG emissions have not been reduced enough, the parties of the UNFCCC put in place a new agreement and set of tools known as the Paris Agreement. Under the Paris Agreement, and in contrast to the Kyoto Protocol, all countries have been invited to submit their voluntary reduction targets, known as the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).
Oman submitted their first NDC in 2015 and has officially ratified the Paris Agreement as of April 24th, 2019 by RD 28/2019. According to the first NDC, Oman had set a target of controlling its GHG emissions by 2% by the year 2030, which amounts to a reduction of roughly 1.8 million tonnes of CO2e. However, Oman has now submitted its second NDC with ambitious targets of controlling GHG emissions by 7% in 2030.
A Carbon Credit is essentially a certificate representing 1 tonne of CO2-equivalent** greenhouse gas emissions that have been removed from the atmosphere. Carbon Credits can be bought and sold on global marketplaces between companies, organizations and individuals.
Before a Project can register Carbon Credits, the emissions reductions must be validated and verified through one of the existing standards and/or schemes such as the UNFCCC’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Verra, or the Gold Standard, for example.
Regulations for the Approval of Clean Development Mechanism Projects was issued by MD 30/2010.
**CO2-equivalents refers to the relative amount of energy that 1 tonne of a gas will absorb over a given period of time, relative to the emissions of 1 tonne of CO2. Different gases have different abilities to absorb energy in the atmosphere (i.e. radiative efficiency) and different lengths of time that they stay in the atmosphere (i.e. lifetime).
Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), also known as Guarantees of Origin in Europe, are a means of measuring and verifying the production of 1 MWh of renewable energy.
- Each MWh of renewable energy that is put onto the electrical grid can be issued a certificate (REC) that represent a contractual agreement between the renewable energy producer and the energy consumer.
- They can only be redeemed by a single consumer, allowing the consumer to make a claim that their energy is sourced from renewable energy. RECs allows companies and entities to make claims against their Scope 2 emissions (i.e. declaring that their Scope 2 emissions have lower or perhaps zero emissions). In Oman, project owners can register and issue IRECs** for their projects by contacting an accredited local IREC Issuer in Oman.
**The IREC Standard and Code Documents provide a standard and guidance for a robust and transparent Energy Attribute Tracking System. The IREC Standard has been developed by the International REC Standard Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides support to local stakeholders and government authorities to facilitate national implementation of IRECs.
- The I-REC Standard ensures that all RECs are in adherence with major international sustainability standards including the GHGP, CDP, RE100, ISO and others. Energy consumers can use I-RECs to meet the requirements of these standards and/or corporate social responsibility policies.