By Ayesha Saba ISLAMABAD, March 23 (INP-WealthPK): Pakistan has effectively reduced its vulnerability to climate change by three points despite the fact that its overall share in the global carbon emissions (CO2) remains less than one percent, said Global Climate Risk Index 2021 report issued recently. Talking to INP-WealthPK, Principal Scientific Officer Pak-NDC Secretariat Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC) Muhammad Arif Goheer said, “An updated greenhouse gases (GHG) inventory has been prepared by the GCISC to gauge the national GHG emissions. This inventory has been prepared based on the latest data sets available, using Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2006 Guidelines”. “The inventory includes four sectors i) Energy including transport, ii) industrial processes & product use (IPPU), iii) agriculture, forestry & other land use (AFOLU), iv) and waste”. Sharing more details, he said, “Estimation under the inventory shows total emissions from Pakistan are 489.87 MtCO2eq for the year 2018, with the energy sector contributing 218.94, industrial processes 25.76, agriculture, forestry and land use 223.45 and waste 21.72 MtCO2 equivalent, respectively. The key GHGs of concern are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O)”. “A number of decisions have been taken by the pro-climate leadership of the country to enhance Pakistan’s resilience to climate change and to decarbonize the economy. Policies and strategies that testify to the government efforts to move towards a low carbon economy are the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act 2016, NTDC Expansion Plan 2018-40, Alternate Renewable Energy Policy - 2019, National Transport Policy 2018, National Electric Vehicle Policy 2019, NEEC Policy 2022 (Draft), Sustainable Energy For All (SEforAll) National Action Plan 2019, Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) for Electric Motors and Fans, Energy Efficient Lighting Program - MEPS, Solarization of Public Schools, Mosques and Public Buildings,” said Arif. Talking about the barriers to decarbonization in Pakistan, Arif pointed out that the main barriers to sector-wise transformation into a greener industry are lack of liquidity to invest in renewable energy and energy efficiency measures, weak enforcement of environmental regulations, lack of awareness of environmental aspects and benefits of the role of renewable energy resources and energy efficiency measures. “Pakistan’s financial needs still remain high, given the country’s vulnerability to climate change and capital-intensive transition to decarbonize the economy. The country envisages enhancing access to international climate finance to deliver contributions, and also considers employing the instruments on enhanced ambition provided in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement”. “Pakistan has already identified market and non-market-based approaches to help diversify the funding sources, including nature performance bonds, green/blue bonds, carbon pricing instruments, etc. Pakistan encourages the private sector to play a crucial role in implementing its climate ambition across sectors and the development of NbS (nature-based solution) that addresses its mitigation and adaptation potential ambitious decisions taken by the pro-climate leadership to enhance Pakistan’s resilience and decarbonize the economy,” he said. In the latest Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP) for 2021-2030, state-owned National Transmission and Despatch Company said its base case involved increasing installed hydropower capacity to 23GW by 2030 from 9.87GW at the end of April 2021. Its share of total capacity would rise to 43.2% from 26.5%. Meanwhile, according to the IGCEP, installed solar power capacity has increased from 400GW to 1.96GW, while wind capacity has increased from 1.24GW to 3.8GW in the same time period. Despite the fact that many industry participants, including the National Transmission and Despatch Co., consider solar and wind to be the cheapest energy sources, the expansions are rather minor.