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The following policies are analysed in this example: Module

? Renewable energy policies. 5

? Landfill gas policies.
? Best available technologies for adipic acid production.

? Cogeneration (combined heat-power) policies.

? Efficiency improvements in the built environment.
? Common Agricultural Policies. Abu Dhabi, UAE

The effects, in terms of CO -equivalent attributed, are sensitive to assumptions with respect to the
2
reference case. The choice of the reference is arbitrary, and therefore always must be described, because
other references may result in other outcomes (and other conclusions) (to be further detailed).

Figure 29 also illustrates the “distance to future policy targets” by including baseline projections and
comparing them with the EU policy target under the Kyoto Protocol. It indicates how much emission
reduction needs to be achieved with additional measures to realise this emission target.

The most simple and therefore most commonly used method to compare the effects on the level of
emissions of different changes is to compare all of these changes with the same baseline. The baseline is
defined as “what would have happened if the changes had not occurred.” Or, in other words, “what will
happen if these changes don’t occur.” Because the answer to this question is always hypothetical, often
the easiest answer is chosen: nothing will happen in the production-structure.

For example, when one wants to evaluate the effect of the increase of nuclear energy, the average
emission factor of the production of electricity of the base year is multiplied by the electricity production
of nuclear plants for a specific year. This comparison can also be made for other changes and measures,
for example the increase in renewable energy or the increase in cogeneration.

This method is easy to use, and it gives a good insight into the scale of the effect of changes and how
the measures relate to one another. However, it’s not really reflecting all complexities. A nuclear power
plant is a source of base load electricity (producing a steady, constant power source), as opposed to
other power sources, such as wind generators, which only operate when the wind blows. When such
differences are taken into account, one can get a better sense of the real impacts of different approaches.
This type of analysis will be more realistic, but it takes considerably more time and data to do.

The fact that a variety of changes and measures occur simultaneously is a complicating factor when
analysing the effectiveness of policy because it makes it more difficult to distinguish between the
effects of individual measures. Because results will depend on the method chosen, measures have to

IEA Training Manual Workshop for the National Reporting Toolkit (NRT) 105