Mitigation Analysis

Introduction

In the context of international initiatives to address global climate change issues, the Government of Venezuela signed and ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in June 1992 and December 1994, respectively. The Convention requires all parties to develop and publish national inventories of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) as well as national plans to reduce or control emissions, taking into account their common but differentiated responsabilities and their specific national and regional development priorities, objectives, and circumstances. Within this context, the Ministry of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources and the Ministry of Energy and Mines developed the "Venezuelan Case- Study to Address Climate Change".

The study was initiated in October 1993, with the financial and technical assistance of the Government of United States, through the U.S. Country Studies Program (USCSP), and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), through the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The main objectives of the Venezuelan Case-Study to Address Climate Change are: i) develop a national inventory of anthropogenic emissions and removals of all greenhouse gases (GHG), ii) assess GHG mitigation options, iii) assess the vulnerability to sea level rise, iv) evaluate the impacts of climate change on life zones, and v) formulate a national climate change action plan. The GHG inventory and vulnerability and impact assessments have been already completed while the action plan is being currently developed.

This report concentrates on the mitigation options analysis, whose main objective is to assess the technologies and practices that can potentially contribute to both greenhouse gas emissions reduction and national development efforts. The analysis focuses on the energy sector and the forestry sector, and provides a detailed evaluation of individual mitigation options to reduce CO2 emissions. A brief consideration is given to methane emissions reduction.

Thus the report provides a description of all the steps and methods used in the mitigation assessment process and the results obtained for each mitigation option, and in divided into two main chapters dealing with the energy and forest sectors, respectively. A background information section, preceding the two main chapters, presents a short description of the country«s characteristics that were considered most relevant to the mitigation analysis.

The energy chapter includes a summary of the Venezuelan energy system, general description of the analytical methods used, definiton of key assumptions, development of baseline and mitigation scenarios, and identification and assessment of mitigation options. The forestry chapter provides a short description of the the country«s forest resources and land use change process along with associated GHG emissions, development of a baseline scenario, detailed assessments of carbon storage potential in forest projects, and development of mitigation scenarios. Both chapters analyze the potential costs and impacts of the mitigation options on national CO2 emissions and provide some consideration of the main barries to options implementation and of general ideas on how to overcome them.

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