Uzbekistan inherited an inefficient district heating system and poorly insulated building stock from the Soviet era. The German Government established a Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA) with measures to target the improvement of insulation in residential buildings. A NAMA is a defined climate policy designed to attract international funding.
Shifting Paradigms supported the NAMA design process with an analysis of the regulatory NAMA framework under the UNFCCC, notably the declarations made under the 2009 Copenhagen Accords. The analysis served to explore the legal requirements and limits for NAMAs in Central Asia, one of which being that the performance of the NAMA should be measured against an internationally agreed metric. The outcome of the analysis guided the selection of policies and incentive schemes suitable for NAMAs.
Building on our substantial experience (gained in the US, China, Estonia and Montenegro) in developing comprehensive approaches for structuring, measuring and implementing large-scale retrofit programs, the project team developed a tool to: (i) establish baselines; and (ii) measure emission reductions in the building sector of Uzbekistan. The tool is an Excel-based instrument that allows monitoring, reporting and verifying emission reductions, providing a standardized approach to baseline establishment and emission reduction quantification for building retrofits.
In addition, together with the Government of Uzbekistan, we designed an institutional structure to support the implementation of the NAMA and the monitoring of emission reductions. This structure has enabled the government and local stakeholders to match actual mitigation action in buildings with NAMA targets and strategies.
Activities included:
- Developing policies and incentive schemes that are suitable for NAMAs in the target region.
- Choosing pilot NAMAs that represent different types of activities (e.g. local project, national, strategy etc).
- Shortlisting candidate strategies for NAMAs and discuss their implementation with relevant government entities.
- Developing standardised approaches to baseline development for energy efficiency projects in buildings in the region.
- Designing a performance-based standard framework for the proposed building NAMAs by developing performance metrics for i) quantifiable reduction of tons of CO2; ii) policy instruments.
Jelmer Hoogzaad was a shareholder of Climate Focus when this project was implemented.
