Procurement of consultancy services for quality assurance of GHG-emissions in Norwegian development aid

Description

Norad aims to integrate environmental and climate concerns in all of its work, in line with its strategy towards 2030. The aim is for Norwegian development cooperation, and Norad’s own operations, to promote global and Norwegian environmental goals for climate, biodiversity and other environmental issues. Norad also expects its grant recipients and suppliers to reduce their own emissions and contribute to reach the goals of the Paris agreement and other international environmental goals.    Information on how Norwegian development assistance contributes to reduced or avoided GHG emissions is currently gathered based on the self-reporting of a sub-set of grant recipients, whereby their efforts in reducing or avoiding GHG emissions are estimated annually, most often measured in CO2- equivalents.  Sectors covered by these grant recipients include renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and reduced deforestation and land degradation.    Following an earlier review done by Norad and the Norwegian Environment Agency, and as part of Norad’s annual reporting on this indicator, considerable variation in the quality of reported emissions figures was uncovered, including from multilateral grant recipients. This includes the following challenges:  • Substantial variation in methodology  • Lack of transparency related to methodology  • Significant errors in reporting  • A general tendency towards optimistic estimates    This inconsistency limits the quality and comparability of the figures. Moreover, there is a risk that the impacts of transformative, potentially cost-effective climate measures of a systemic nature, such as reduction of fossil fuel subsidies, collaboration to promote carbon taxes and investing in technology are not adequately captured in the current figures.  There is also the risk of double counting emissions reductions, including when aggregating the self-reported GHG emissions reductions from grant recipients into one figure.