Setting additional targets

3 October 2024

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Cities are encouraged to think beyond one overall, city-wide GHG target when goal setting.

These points are worthwhile to consider:

Short-term vs long-term GHG targets
- Linking long-term GHG emissions reduction targets and strategies to nearer-term reductions and action is also useful for communications and public perception because it is more concrete.
Sector vs overall targets
Targets for GHG emission reductions or for other more easily measurable mitigation outcomes

Local governments can set individual sector emission reduction targets which collectively contribute to the overarching city vision and/or to the city-wide target and/or to developmental and service delivery priorities of the city.

These additional targets, if set, should be designed to be helpful to the local government, and targets can be set for specific emitting activities, e.g. increasing recycling of waste by XX% or similar.

Other important considerations for target setting

Principles for setting and monitoring targets

According to the Mitigation Goal Standard, the five principles which should apply to any mitigation targets are:

Essentially, for the above to hold, you need the buy-in of elected and administrative officials, and other key stakeholders.

Key performance indicators

To support the attainment of targets, a range of key performance indicators (KPIs) should be selected so that progress and co-benefits can be assessed through a Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) framework.
Some of these will be direct inputs into emissions inventories.

Participatory processes

Ensuring a participatory approach to target setting is highly important and can greatly impact the buy-in towards the targets set, which ultimately impacts whether they are successfully achieved.
Transparent and accessible communication of the targets, their potential outcomes and how they will be assessed should reach all stakeholders.
Public participation can generate both enhanced accuracy by obtaining ground-level information; and accountability and trust with relevant parties. As with most policies, public acceptability is central to implementation.
Participatory processes for target setting is also about engaging with other stakeholders (e.g. private sector, NGOs) who need to be involved in implementation.

Tools to support mitigation target setting

Several tools are available for running the calculations associated with emissions reduction targets. However, these are not covered in this course.

Using and updating emission inventories

Changing baseline inventories may be necessary as data availability improves and new data emerge, to enable accurate monitoring of targets
Robust data collection systems need to be established to regularly produce GHG emissions inventories to monitor mitigation targets.
The availability of data and capacity for monitoring should be considered when developing these targets. For example, base year targets work better for under-capacitated cities.

CoM SSA Sustainable Energy Access and Climate Action Plan (SEACAP) course

Participants 1632

Setting additional targets

3 October 2024

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