WHAT ARE BASELINE EMISSIONS? WHY ARE THEY IMPORTANT?
Measuring greenhouse gas emissions and implementing strategies to reduce their levels are important steps towards a more sustainable planet. They are crucial components of environmental policies and smart decision-making. But to mitigate the problem, we have to have a clear understanding of what the problem is.
A greenhouse gas is any gas in the atmosphere that absorbs heat energy rising from the Earth’s surface and reflects it back down to the Earth’s surface; causing what is known as the greenhouse effect. Methane, Carbon Dioxide, Nitrous Oxide, and water vapor are few of the most prominent greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, and their emissions are responsible for the environmental issues we’re facing today, like air pollution, global warming, and climate change. By trapping heat and concentrating gases back to the surface, greenhouse gases have far-reaching effects on ecosystems, distribution chains, air quality, and global health.
Environmental policies are created in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ensure that levels are as low as possible. But, does this mean we can reach a scenario where greenhouse gas levels are zero? Is this what environmental policies are striving for? The short answer is no, but it is definitely a bit more complicated than that.
While it is important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible, completely eliminating them would be impractical and quite unrealistic. Greenhouse gases are everywhere all the time, and we produce them in almost every activity or job we do or participate in. However, we must be cautious of their levels. For that reason, policies and mitigation strategies are implemented, but they are implemented based on a reference point. This reference point is what’s called the baseline emissions.
According to an article in the Climate Policy journal, “a baseline scenario describes future greenhouse gas emissions levels in the absence of future, additional mitigation efforts and policies.” They are often referred to as “business as usual” scenarios because they evaluate emission levels that are most likely to occur in the absence of actions taken to meet the mitigation goal. They are used to evaluate the performance of a reduction program by comparing emissions levels after its implementation with levels documented before its implementation; the baseline levels.
Different reduction programs require different baseline emissions. There is no definite way of calculating its levels. The Kyoto Protocol, for example, a protocol supported by the UN that binds signatory nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has the year 1990 set as the baseline year. This baseline allows nations to have a common starting point and be capable of comparing their individual reduction efforts with one another. The Pilot Emission Reduction Trading (PERT) program in Canada is another example, but this one has had its baseline data calculated by averaging emissions levels from the previous five years.
Whatever the baseline date, the objective is the same; to provide a reference point for proper quantification and evaluation of the performance of greenhouse gas reduction programs, as well as help policymakers and legislators understand the kinds of actions that are most effective at reducing emissions. Organizations that use baseline emissions include governments, businesses, and NGOs.
Baseline emissions data are valuable at keeping citizens in-check of their greenhouse gas emissions, and prove to be effective at guiding legislators and industries in forming reduction guidelines and producing objective results that are easy to compare and report. But can baseline emissions be counterproductive? Since they are merely predictions that represent assumed scenarios, there are many instances when values are inaccurate and do not represent what would actually happen in the case where no mitigation actions have been taken. It is in the hands of legislators to make sure that predictive measures are as close to reality as possible in order to minimize errors and accurately track progress.