Greenhouse Gas Accounting Tool for Water Sector Lending Projects
Tetra Tech is supporting the World Bank in its commitment to climate-smart investment by developing the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Accounting Tool for Water Sector Lending Projects around the world.
As climate trends around the globe are shifting, our clients and major international development donors are increasingly more in need of consistent and transparent GHG project accounting methods. Tetra Tech developed the GHG Accounting Tool for the World Bank’s Water Global Practice. The tool enables users to calculate project and baseline emissions for water and wastewater utilities, multipurpose reservoirs, rice agriculture irrigation, and equipment use at these agricultural production facilities.
The user-friendly, comprehensive, Excel-based tool allows users to input project information such as country and economic lifetime. The user then selects the energy-supplying sources and the percentage of energy supplied by each source to automatically calculate GHG emissions, providing real-time targets for emissions reductions. Having users input data directly provides a broader and more comprehensive range of data for projects, allowing for more accurate programming in the future.
All Water Global Practice International Bank for Reconstruction and International Development Association Investment Project Financing projects that have a project concept note now require GHG accounting. Using the GHG Accounting Tool, the World Bank and its clients now can estimate a project’s GHG emission impact early in the project life cycle. This knowledge enables task teams to mainstream climate change mitigation action in the project design and is a key, cost-effective measure in managing and reducing GHG emissions. Demonstrating net GHG emissions reductions also strengthens the case for energy efficiency projects such as non-revenue water reduction and refurbishment of existing facilities; renewable energy investments such as solar pumping; and climate-smart agricultural activities for irrigation projects.
In the 2018 fiscal year, 61 percent of Water Global Practice projects that required GHG accounting resulted in net emissions reductions, yielding a total of -200,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO₂e) per year. Of all Water Global Practice International Bank for Reconstruction and International Development Association Investment Project Financing produced in 2018, 84 percent resulted in net emissions reductions, yielding -45 MtCO₂e.
Tetra Tech’s expertise in simulating and predicting how climate change will impact the behavior of physical, biological, and chemical components of natural and manmade systems provides the World Bank with the data needed to make informed decisions.