The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) handbook discusses the origins and relevance of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) for renewable energy deployment in developing countries, identifies instruments that can help overcome diverse barriers to such deployment, and highlights best practices and key findings from case studies in Peru, Kenya and Grenada, including the recommendation that NAMAs should combine multiple activities and instruments to support investments in renewable energy.
26 November 2012: The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has released a new report, titled “IRENA Handbook on Renewable Energy Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) for Policy Makers and Project Developers,” that analyzes the role NAMAs can play in renewable energy deployment in developing countries and offers insights from case studies in Peru, Kenya and Grenada.
The report explains that NAMAs refer to publicly supported voluntary mitigation actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in countries that do not have legally binding emissions reduction targets. NAMAs have emerged in the context of the negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the report finds that over 50 countries have identified NAMAs, which are being included in a registry under the UNFCCC.
The report argues that NAMAs can be instrumental in the deployment of renewable energy technologies. In this respect, the report identifies political, economic, financial, regulatory, and technical barriers in the implementation of renewable energy projects, and discusses non-market-based incentives, market mechanisms and regulations that are suitable NAMA instruments to overcome such barriers, including: percentage-based targets; awareness raising campaigns; technical assistance; capacity building; grants and loan guarantees; green labeling; and renewable energy certificates. This analysis then forms the basis for an overview of best practices for constructing NAMAs, for which the report differentiates between the conception, the implementation, and the operation phase.
Finally, the report provides case studies from Peru, Kenya and Grenada and finds, inter alia, that: NAMAs can aid in achieving broader strategic energy targets, such as stable energy supply, as well as environmental sustainability; success is likely to be higher when combining multiple activities and instruments to support investments in renewable energy; and NAMAs are dependent on the availability of reliable data for estimation of baseline scenarios and emission reductions. [Publication: IRENA Handbook on Renewable Energy Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) for Policy Makers and Project Developers]