Supporting policies and programmes for enhanced NDC implementation & LTS development
The NDC Action Project has supported Costa Rica’s exemplary initiative for the involvement of the private sector, local governments and other types of organisations in national climate action, the so-called Country Carbon Neutrality Programme (PPCN, for its Spanish acronym). This support included the review, improvement and updating of guidelines for the participation of organisations, educational centres and communities in the programme, as well as the development of products, the organisation of events, and the overall implementation of the PPCN.
PPCN is a voluntary mechanism for the reporting of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventories and the demonstration of emission reduction and removal actions, that has been developed by the Climate Change Directorate (DCC) of the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) in the context of the National Climate Change Strategy and the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).
At a general level, the PPCN consists of three categories of participation: Organizational, Communities and Products. The latter, made official in March 2021, includes criteria related to the implementation of carbon footprint and carbon neutrality studies, third party verification, accreditation of OVVs and the granting of recognitions related to the management of GHG emissions by MINAE's DCC. For this purpose, the project supported the elaboration of the decree for the officialization of the Country Program for Climate Leadership (Executive Decree N°42884-MINAE of March 4, 2021) and the creation of 5 Ministerial Agreements to officialise the different PPCN Categories.
The project supports a pilot process to help companies participate in the new product category and increase their climate ambition by adopting low-emission models in their value chains, as well as to prepare them for more demanding markets. The project developed a pilot project in which four companies in the coffee and medical devices sectors were supported to obtain one of the recognitions of the PPCN product category.
Additionally, as part of the project and in support of compliance with axis #6 of the Decarbonisation Plan and thematic area #5 of the NDC (2020) related to the transformation of industry, commerce and services, the Methodology for the creation of decarbonization and adaptation roadmaps roadmaps that promotes technology transition and climate action for companies in the industrial sector is in the process of being developed. The methodology can be easily adjusted for its use at the sectoral level, incl. to create roadmaps in non-industrial sectors. It considers technical, financial, economic and environmental aspects to create roadmaps aligned with national and international emission reduction targets and now the project team is complemented this version of the methodology for the inclusion of adaptation criteria to achieve resilience in private sector. Its implementation requires sectoral and national inputs that seek to align policies at different levels of execution. In addition, its use allows comparison, traceability and transparency of company roadmaps. It was developed with the participation of experts and was reviewed in several stakeholder consultation workshops.
Furthermore, the NDC Action Project supported a study on decarbonisation options for industrial processes, which includes efforts to analyse the transforming process of refrigeration and air conditioning (RAC). The report includes a review of the decarbonisation options for the RAC process as well as the necessary information to produce a cost-benefit analysis, marginal abatement cost curves and the generation of decarbonisation scenarios for these technologies in alignment with Costa Rica's NDC. For each existing technology in the process, decarbonisation options were identified and the cost-benefit ratio of different scenarios was estimated, which will serve as inputs for the preparation of roadmaps for the decarbonisation of the involved companies by means of the aforementioned methodology. The same type of study is currently being carried out for tourist vessels.
