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The Energy Community Secretariat has published the paper “Consolidation of climate planning processes in the Energy Community Contracting Parties”, which provides the Contracting Parties with a concise and simple guidance on how they could consolidate their multiple climate change and energy planning processes and international obligations into one single process, ensuring efficiency and alignment.
The paper was prepared in the frame of a Memorandum of Understanding on strengthening the cooperation for support to South-East European EnC Contracting Parties in the development of their National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs), signed in March between the GIZ project Capacity Development for Climate Policy in the Countries of South-eastern, Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia – Phase III (CDCP III), GIZ Open Regional Fund for South-East Europe – Energy Efficiency (ORF-EE) and the Energy Community Secretariat.
At the IRENA workshop held in Sarajevo on June 11-12, Dubravka Bošnjak, ORF-EE Project Manager announced official launch of the project and said that “support will be provided for the establishment of the framework for NECP development, strengthening of the cooperation between institutions responsible for energy and climate policies at national level and enhancing of the work of the Energy and Climate Committee at the regional level.” Bošnjak also noted that the paper “Consolidation of climate planning processes in the Energy Community Contracting Parties” is prepared by the NewClimate Institute (NCI) while the Secretariat and its Contracting Parties provided technical input and feedback to NCI.
The paper gives a thorough overview of the various planning processes that are ongoing in the Contracting Parties, investigating the opportunities for aligning the timing of outputs and consolidating them into one single planning process.
Burden on available resources for planning exercises
The main process started at the beginning of 2018, when the Energy Community adopted a non-binding Recommendation (2018/01/MCEnC) on preparing for the development of NECPs. In June 2018, the Energy Community issued the Policy Guidelines (PG 03/2018) on the development of NECPs which said that these plans should cover the period from 2021 to 2030, including a perspective until 2050.
Meanwhile, other energy and climate strategy and planning processes are currently ongoing in all of the Contracting Parties including updates to their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), Long-Term Strategies (LTS) for low emission development.
Also many of the Contracting Parties have developed or are in the process of developing national energy sector strategies.
The preparation of all these strategy documents and action plans can place a burden on available resources for planning exercises.
Four recommendations
NCI has concluded that there is an overlap between these climate related processes in all Contracting Parties, offering opportunities for consolidation which is summarized in 4 recommendations:
- In some countries, medium-term climate-related strategies need not to be developed in separate processes
- NDC updates can be international reporting documents based on the latest NECP or other national Climate Action Plans or Strategies
- Contracting Parties should have clearly defined roles and mandates for cross-ministerial coordinating bodies, working groups, and data collection teams and
- Make use of Progress Reports when writing National Communications (NC) to the UNFCCC and vice versa.
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