World Bank: Heat and water scarcity raise energy demand in Jordan

Al-Anbat - Raneem Alhalawani

Jordan is the first developing country to build monitoring, reporting and verification systems and a record of greenhouse emissions data in accordance with international standards.

Al-Anbat - The World Bank confirmed that Jordan is facing climatic challenges, including rising temperatures, decreasing rain, increasing drought, and shrinking water resources due to evaporation.

He explained in a recent report that Jordan is still highly dependent on imports of fossil fuels with its limited natural resources and the severe scarcity of water resources for a population of 10.3 million people, including more than a million refugees. He explained that the extreme heat and scarcity of water resources lead to a high demand for energy.  They increase the financial burden on the state budget and affect the competitiveness of the economy.

Jordan was the first developing country to build monitoring, reporting and verification systems and a registry for greenhouse emissions data in accordance with international standards that form the building blocks of a future emissions trading system, in collaboration with the World Bank’s Climate Repository Program and the Partnership for Market Implementation to develop and test this digital infrastructure.

The report stated that Jordan, in order to prepare for its monitoring, reporting and verification system, issued in 2019 a decree on climate change that establishes the institutional and regulatory framework on climate change in government agencies, with the assistance of the Partnership for Market Equipping, which preceded the Partnership for Market Implementation.

Jordan has also established its monitoring, reporting and verification system to track greenhouse gas emissions in sectors such as energy, transportation and agriculture, and to account for emissions and their reductions, and to link the results to its national contribution to combating climate change, and its data logging system has been established to support trading operations for eligible projects in international carbon markets.  In the midst of this process, it was decided to make this software open source and make it available to any interested country.

He shows that work is also continuing in this regard in Jordan, which is preparing a long-term strategy to reduce emissions in order to achieve long-term sustainable economic growth and low carbon emissions, explaining that in 2020, Jordan launched the 10-year national strategy for the energy sector to improve its mix of sources energy, and reduce carbon emissions by 10% by 2030 while reducing its dependence on imports.

He stressed that within the framework of the project (Program for Financing Inclusive, Transparent and Climate-Sensitive Investments According to Results), the monitoring, reporting and verification system is being expanded to include 22 institutions and ministries.

The program will help integrate climate change considerations into the decision-making process, and enable the monitoring, reporting and verification system to calculate greenhouse gas emissions reductions for climate-smart projects to see if they qualify to participate in the carbon market from Jordan to the MENA region and beyond.

And Senior Climate Change Specialist at the World Bank, Harikumar Gadi, said that Jordan has a leading role in the field of climate, as it is the first developing country in the world to possess this type of comprehensive systems and its monitoring, reporting and verification system at a high degree of quality, explaining that the Bank is currently unifying its approach to facilitate its implementation in other countries under its new initiative (Partnership for Market Implementation).

He explained that this system is now being simulated in the West Bank, Gaza and Sri Lanka with the help of the Partnership for Market Equip, stressing that many countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Africa, Latin America and Asia have expressed their interest in the open source technology of monitoring, reporting, verification and data recording systems.