Page 5 - AfrElec Week 01 2021

AfrElec COMMENTARY AfrElec

developing countries. What is more, hardly any
estimates are based on actual emissions. Most Asia & Pacific, the Middle East & North Africa,
estimates rely on parameters from engineering and sub-Saharan Africa.
studies that are applied to survey-based activity As such, the World Bank’s research suggests
measures for transport, energy production and that satellite-based CO2 measures can provide
manufacturing. They are particularly suspect for valuable support for analysing and assessing
developing countries, since many of the meas- urban emissions performance.
ures are calibrated using databases and models There is also potential to explore how such
from high-income economies. data can be developed through an open-source,
The advent of satellite-based CO2 measure- regularly updated database that will support
ment has greatly expanded the scope for emis- more applications of this kind. Our hope is that
sions-performance ratings. we can build a deeper understanding and abil-
A recent World Bank paper demonstrated ity to more accurately monitor country and city
that data from NASA’s OCO (Orbiting Carbon efforts to cut emissions toward meeting the goals
Observatory)-2 platform could measure CO2 of the Paris Agreement and those made more
emissions from more than 1,200 cities, with pop- recently in Glasgow.
ulations greater than 500,000, in 138 countries. Similar satellite data is being used to measure
Using such satellite data allows actual emis- methane emissions from gas pipelines, oil wells,
sions from cities to be measured. These can then fossil fuel processing plants and landfills all over
be compared against estimated emissions that the world.
the World Bank predicts using an econometric Cutting flaring is a major issue across the
model based on demographic, economic and oil and gas industry, and producers are making
geographic characteristics. efforts to reduce it, often as part of their ESG
The World Bank’s research found that there commitments. Satellites are providing new ways
are wide performance variations within and of ensuring that such commitments are being
across regions. met.
In general, city performance exceeds expec- Such data can also be used to assess the accu-
tations (emissions below predictions) in India, racy of governments’ and companies’ public
Western Europe and the former Comecon coun- statements about emissions and can be used to
tries, while it falls short in China, the rest of East combat greenwashing.™

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