ASTANA (TCA) — The Ministry of Energy of Kazakhstan and the World Bank on January 26 launched a new project aimed at designing and developing Kazakhstan’s greenhouse gases (GHG) electronic reporting platform and its supporting institutional and legal frameworks, the World Bank said.
“Since 2013, facilities in the power and oil & gas sectors in Kazakhstan have reported on CO2, CH4, N2O, and PFCs emissions in hard copy. Transitioning to an electronic compliance system will help improve the quality and efficiency of the data for better policy making,” said Olzhas Agabekov, Acting Director of Climate Change Department in the Ministry of Energy.
The electronic platform (or “cadaster”) will enable the online submission of GHG data by Kazakhstan’s major emitters, in accordance with the new amendments to the country’s Environmental Code. The Code foresees the development of such a system to help facility operators submit their GHG emission reports online, third-party verifiers to confirm the accuracy of the data collected, and the GHG program administrator (Joint Stock Company “Zhasyl Damu”) and its regulator (the Committee on Ecological Regulation and Control and Climate Change Department under the Ministry of Energy) to automatically ensure compliance with corporate reporting obligations. The system is expected to become fully operational by the end of December 2017, which will also, in turn, support the relaunch of Kazakhstan Emissions Trading System, expected in January 2018.
At the launch, experts from JSC “Zhasyl Damu”, the national operator of Kazakhstan’s trading scheme for greenhouse gas emissions (KZ ETS), and France’s Technical Center on Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (CITEPA), presented an analysis of the technical, legal and institutional requirements to develop and operationalize Kazakhstan’s cadaster platform, and solicited views from various local stakeholders participating in the event.
The project is supported by the World Bank’s Partnership for Market Readiness (PMR), which brings together more than 30 countries – collectively representing about 80% of global GHG emissions – to design and implement innovative policy instruments for climate change mitigation.
“A need for accurate and reliable GHG data has become even more important as countries work to implement the Paris Agreement and achieve their post-2020 mitigation targets. We commend Kazakhstan for leading the way in ensuring transparency and accountability of GHG emissions from key sectors of its economy,” said Craig Meisner, Senior Environmental Economist at the World Bank and PMR Project Lead.
