Margaret Martin, Natural Resources Canada, reported on a workshop on innovative options for financing technology transfer, held in Montreal, Canada, from 27-29 September 2004. She stressed the significance of risk in deterring investment, and highlighted the need to develop partnerships.

Daniele Violetti, UNFCCC, noted that the private sector provides the majority of resource flows to developing countries for climate change activities. In developing project proposals, he stressed the need to seek added value for particular stakeholders, to quantify expected benefits and revenues, and to incorporate other priorities such as poverty alleviation.

Yap Kok Seng, Malaysian Meteorological Service, said that Annex I Parties should create an enabling environment to help reduce the risk associated with investment in technology transfer. He stressed the need for additional finance flows from outside the CDM framework due to limitations associated with CDM projects.

Halldor Thorgeirsson, UNFCCC, said the importance of reporting has increased with the forthcoming entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, noting that inventory reporting is the backbone of climate policy.

James Grabert, UNFCCC, noted that the “Common Reporting Format (CRF) Reporter,” a GHG inventory reporting software, has been developed to facilitate GHG reporting on the basis of a COP-8 decision. He said the software has been delivered to National Focal Points and institutions responsible for inventories.

Tleussen Temertekov, UNFCCC, presented an overview of the Secretariat’s software tools and databases, describing challenges faced during the development of the CRF Reporter, including complexity and amount of data, sectoral differences, and differing data formats. He outlined plans for developing the software, including: development of a module on land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF); elaboration of a simplified web-based version for data import; enhancement of existing databases; and tools for further automation and data quality improvement.
 

Vincent Lalieu, UNFCCC, explained the history of the software’s development, including inventory compilations and testing by Parties, and provided a demonstration of the software. He highlighted import and export features, consistency, completeness and recalculation checks, calculation options and submission preparations.

Roberto Acosta, UNFCCC, asked Parties to test the tool and to report problems and recommendations to the Secretariat.

Discussion: Several participants expressed satisfaction with the software, and recommended developing more automation for data handling.

Simon Eggleston, IPCC, highlighted the importance of the IPCC Guidelines in furthering the goals of the UNFCCC, and said the 2006 IPCC Guidelines consist of five volumes: cross-cutting issues and reporting tables; energy; industrial processes and product use; agriculture, forestry and other land use; and waste. He also discussed direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions and how they will be dealt with in the 2006 Guidelines.
William Kojo Agyemang-Bonsu, IPCC, introduced key issues in the volume on industrial processes and product use. He listed the GHGs and emission sources included in the current Guidelines, and discussed the criteria for including new GHGs and sources.

N.H. Ravindranath, IPCC, presented the volume on agriculture, forests

and other land use, noting that a lot of experience has been accumulated from the 1996 IPCC Guidelines. He said the new Guidelines will address problems identified, such as the classification of land categories, and aim to be more user friendly.

Riitta Pipatti, IPCC, outlined the volume on waste, focusing on main changes and improvements. She listed variations in waste treatment, within and between countries, and changes in waste management as challenges.

Kenneth Skog, IPCC, discussed the proposed guidelines for harvested wood products. He defined harvested wood products as any wood material removed from the land. He said the Good Practice Guidance Goals influence the new Guidelines, noted that the new Guidelines aim to be “approach neutral,” and explained how the estimations of carbon storage will be done.

Dario Gomez, IPCC, introduced the contents of the energy volume, describing the evolution from the 1996 Guidelines, with a particular focus on the reference approach.

Marcus Amann, IIASA, discussed the use of models to analyze global long-term stabilization strategies. He emphasized that a sustainable development scenario would help achieving stabilization of GHG emissions with minimal mitigation measures, relying only on technology transfer, research and development, and population control.

Fabian Wagner, IIASA, presented on the medium-term potential and cost of national mitigation options. He gave an overview of the GAINS model developed by IIASA to assess abatement costs of reducing emissions of the six Kyoto gases, and which has been applied to 43 regions in Europe.

Ger Klassen, European Commission, spoke on assessing the cost-effectiveness of medium-term multi-gas mitigation strategies. He reported projected reductions in Europe of 1% for carbon dioxide, 19% for methane, and 20% for nitrogen oxide by 2012 relative to 1990. He stressed that a 15% reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in Europe can

be achieved by 2020 at a cost of €30 billion per year, amounting to 0.2% of the gross domestic product.

Marcus Amann discussed co-benefits of climate change mitigation on air pollution. He stated that achieving a 15% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in Europe by 2020 would entail simultaneous reductions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particular matter, and imply 3000 fewer premature deaths. Amann noted that such benefits would be even greater in developing countries, and would imply considerable cost savings in health care and air pollution control.

Frank Raes, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, made a presentation on the impacts of ozone precursor emissions on radiative forcing and background ozone. He said air pollution policy could have negative effects on GHG emissions, as nitrogen oxide controls decrease ozone concentration but increase the lifetime of methane.