By Blessing Manale
In 1997, South Africa joined the majority of countries in the international community in ratifying the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
This commitment to a multilateral solution to the global climate crisis brought with it responsibility to set our carbon dioxide emission targets through legislation, policy instruments and informed by the best available science.
It has been a busy week for climate action as the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) approved the Climate Change Bill, paving its way for assenting by the President, a few days before the 6th Administration concludes its business ahead of the 2024 elections.
With the Climate Change Bill now a done deal, it provides for the development of a long-term national greenhouse gas emissions trajectory and its review from time to time and establishes a clear legal basis for allocating sectoral emissions targets to relevant sectors, and carbon budgets to large emitters.
On Friday, April 26 the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) published two critical parts of the country’s mitigation system. They are the Sectoral Emissions Targets (SETs) for public and on Thursday, May 2, it also published the 9th Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory, also for public comment, covering up to the end of 2022. The release for comments of these two planning tools is welcome as it gives a sense of where we are in our GHG emissions reduction journey, and the SETs provide the target framework for where we are going.
The GHG, which is a response to the provision of the Climate Change Bill for a just transition away from our current carbon-intensive energy system and towards a de-carbonised economy and society, while meeting our critical development challenges. It is only though a formalised Greenhouse Gas Inventory that we can strengthen the evidence base for further climate action, monitoring, and evaluations.
The GHG Inventory provides a huge amount of detail on emissions and trends across different sectors and for the economy as a whole. It is a critical document that provides the basis for significant policy setting and research.
The 9th GHG Inventory shows that country-wide emissions are down off a peak of 529 Mt CO2-e in 2008 to 436 Mt CO2-e in 2022 (rounded).
The 2022 emissions of 436 Mt CO2-e are comfortably within the NDC target range of 398 to 510 Mt CO2-e by 2025.
However, it does leave us with some work to do prior to 2030 to be between the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) targeted range of 350 and 420. This is where the SETs come in.
The SETs “are greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, either qualitative or quantitative, applicable to sectors or sub-sectors over a period” and implemented at the level of national government. SETs are allocated for agriculture, industry, energy, mining, human settlements, transport, and environment.
These are without doubt the top emitting sectors in our economy, and clearly for us to transition, to a low carbon future, policies, and measures either must be newly developed and/or existing policies and measures need to be enhanced.
The SETs are therefore a critical component in aligning sectoral level targets with the national commitment of the NDC, as they will have to “align with NDC 5-year periods, as well as longer-term SETs to 2050 that will guide the country towards the goal of net-zero emissions as communicated in the Low Emission Development Strategy 2050.
The information in the GHG Inventory and the SETs are critical as the South African government are, early in 2025, required under the Paris Agreement to submit an update of the NDC covering the period 2030 to 2035.
The SETs must therefore set the basis for achieving our NDC target for 2030, while setting the basis for going on to 2035 for which new SETs will be issued.
For example, the proposed SET allocation for electricity is 124.7 MtCO2-eq by 2030 (aligned with the IRP2023) with a reduction of 47.9 MtCO2-e from Demand Side Management and Energy Efficiency). This target will take us to the upper bound of the NDC.
It is given that that GHG emissions in the different sectors across the economy will increase and/or decrease over time, affected by several drivers such a change in market demand of a certain product, new technologies that shift the activity of a different sector, behavioural changes at a community or societal level that affects economic activity, global economic dynamics that affects local economic activity, unpredicted policy changes that affects activities of a certain sector.
As we continue, we need to start thinking of longer-term SETs to 2050 that will guide the country towards our goal of net-zero emissions as communicated in the Low Emission Development Strategy 2050.
Blessing Manale is the head of Communications and Outreach, Presidential Climate Commission.
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