Identifying Project Activities
- Project Activity: A project activity is like a specific action or step taken to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. GHGs are gases like carbon dioxide and methane that contribute to global warming.
- GHG Reductions: The goal of each project activity is to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released into the environment.
- GHG Project: A GHG project is a larger initiative that may include more than one project activity. It’s like a collection of different actions or interventions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
- Estimation and Quantification: To understand how effective each project activity is, we need to estimate and quantify the amount of greenhouse gas reductions it achieves. This involves figuring out how much less of these gases are being released due to the specific action taken.
Identifying Primary Effects
The Project Protocol classifies six generic types of primary effects:
- Reduction in combustion emissions from generating grid-connected electricity.
- Reduction in combustion emissions from generating energy or off-grid electricity, or from flaring.
- Reductions in industrial process emissions from a change in industrial activities or management practices.
- Reductions in fugitive emissions.
- Reductions in waste emissions.
- Increased storage or removals of CO2 by biological processes.
Considering All Secondary Effects
Project activities can have effects beyond their main purpose, called secondary effects. These can be positive (reducing emissions) or negative (increasing emissions). It’s important to consider these effects before finalizing a greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction project.
Secondary Effects Overview:
- Importance of Secondary Effects: Sometimes, the changes in emissions caused by secondary effects can be significant enough to affect the viability of the entire project. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand and assess both primary and secondary effects.
- Consideration of Secondary Effects: The guidance provided in the project protocol helps developers think comprehensively about secondary effects. However, it’s not necessary to conduct a complete lifecycle analysis for all projects. The principle of relevance helps decide which secondary effects are important based on the project’s purpose and the developers’ needs.
One-Time Effects: One-time effects are changes in GHG emissions that occur during the construction, installation, establishment, decommissioning, or termination of a project.
- Examples: Construction-related emissions may arise from transportation of equipment or use of certain materials. Decommissioning-related effects may involve off-site waste disposal.
- Land-use Project Example: Land-use projects like reforestation may have one-time effects, such as emissions from clearing vegetation for planting.
Upstream and Downstream Effects: These are recurring effects during the operating phase of a project, related to the inputs used (upstream) or the products produced (downstream).
- Examples: Upstream effects may occur in projects using fossil fuels, affecting extraction, harvesting, and transportation. Downstream effects may arise from changes in material use or product application, affecting GHG emissions.
Market Responses: Market responses occur when alternative providers or users react to changes caused by the project. These responses can be positive or negative.
- Examples: Negative responses may involve shifts in logging locations due to a forest protection project. Positive responses could include increased supply from a forest plantation.
- Factors Influencing Market Response: The extent of market response depends on factors like the availability of substitutes, the ability to change supply or demand, and the cumulative impact of similar projects.
- Considerations: If the project involves products with many substitutes or alternative suppliers, market responses are likely. Developers should describe the likelihood of market responses for each input or product.
- Estimation and Mitigation: If negative market responses cannot be eliminated, developers should estimate their significance. If estimation is not feasible, reasons should be documented. The estimated market response should be factored into the final quantification of secondary effects.
Estimating the Relative Magnitude of Secondary Effects
Project developers need to estimate the size of secondary effects to decide if they are significant. Here are some basic ways to estimate these effects:
Using Default or Existing Data:
- What it means: Developers can use readily available data or rough estimates as a starting point to figure out how big secondary effects might be.
- Why it’s useful: This method is cost-effective and works well for effects that don’t involve a market response, like one-time effects.
- Example: If there’s existing data on emissions related to a similar project, that data can be used as a reference.
Using Emission Factors:
- What it means: Developers can estimate secondary effects by multiplying an emission rate with the amount of input or product related to the change in greenhouse gas emissions.
- Why it’s useful: This approach is effective for estimating effects related to the use or production of inputs (like materials or fuels).
- Example: To estimate changes in methane emissions from coal extraction, multiply the emission rate (tonnes of CO2eq/tonne of coal) by the difference in coal use between the project and baseline.
Undertaking a Market Assessment:
- What it means: A market assessment involves modeling how the market responds to changes in supply or demand caused by the project. This can be done through economic modeling.
- Challenges: Creating a model for a specific market can be expensive and challenging. Different models and assumptions may yield different results.
- When it’s necessary: Market assessments are usually necessary when the changes caused by the project are significant relative to the overall market size.
Applying the Conservativeness Principle:
- What it means: Since estimating secondary effects involves uncertainty, developers should use conservative estimates. This means using higher estimates for project emissions and lower or zero estimates for baseline emissions.
- Why it’s useful: This approach helps account for uncertainty, especially when it’s challenging to determine baseline conditions for secondary effects.
- Example: When using a performance standard procedure to estimate baseline emissions, assume that baseline emissions for secondary effects are zero if conditions are unclear.
Assessing the Significance of Secondary Effects
- Definition of Significant Secondary Effects: Only important or significant secondary effects are considered when assessing the overall impact of a greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction project.
- Criteria for Determining Significance: Determining if a secondary effect is significant can be subjective and depends on the project’s context. The following criteria help in making this decision:
- Positive Environmental Impact: If a secondary effect is positive (meaning it increases the estimate of GHG reductions) but is costly to monitor and quantify, it might be practical to exclude it from the assessment. This exclusion leads to a conservative estimate of GHG reductions.
- Relative Size: If a secondary effect is small compared to the primary effect and other secondary effects, it may be excluded. However, the cumulative impact of excluding multiple “small” effects should be considered. In some cases, a single proxy estimate for multiple small effects may be developed.
- Negligible Market Response: If a secondary effect is expected due to a market response, but the market response is small or negligible, the secondary effect may be considered insignificant. This is especially true if the project’s impact on the market for products or services is very small compared to the total market.
- Justification for Exclusion: Any decision to exclude a secondary effect must be justified. The justification should also include an assessment of whether the effect could become significant in the future due to changing circumstances.
- Canceling Out of Significant Secondary Effects: In some cases, two significant secondary effects—one positive and one negative—associated with related GHG sources may balance each other. For example, if a project switches from coal to biomass for stationary combustion, reducing emissions from coal transportation but increasing emissions from biomass transportation, and these two effects cancel each other out, they might be excluded from the assessment.
- Substantiation: If excluding secondary effects, especially those canceling each other out, the expected magnitudes of both effects should be clearly supported with evidence.
