Iceland
Rating
Assessment
Iceland is rated Medium. Although both the -15% pledge and -30% pledge introduced in the Copenhagen Accord are conditional, these would be significantly more stringent targets than Iceland's Kyoto target for the first commitment period (+10%). We estimate that LULUCF accounting leads to a small credit.
Description
Iceland's Kyoto Protocol target (2008-2012) is +10% relative to 1990 emission levels. In May 2009, Iceland proposed to decrease emissions by -15% relative to 1990 by 2020 and from -50 to -75% by 2050. In February 2010, Iceland announced that in a joint effort with the EU they would adhere to the -30% target of 1990 emissions by 2020 as part of a global agreement post-2012 provided that other developed countries commit themselves to comparable efforts and developing countries contribute according to their capabilities. The -15% target is conditional on keeping the current Marrakesh Accords in particular on LULUCF and Decision 14/CP.7 which allows it a special exemption for single large projects to be excluded from the base year (see Source).
In May 2012, Iceland submitted a provisional QELRO level of 80 for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. This means that Iceland’s average yearly emissions during the period of 2013-2020 are proposed to be between 81 and 84% of 1990 levels.
Status
Official announcement
Date of pledge
May 2009
Source
Snorrason, A (2011) Prediction of Reference Level for the period 2013-2020 for forest management in Iceland, Iceland Forest Research Iceland's pledge to the Copenhagen Accord
Iceland (2009) Informal data submission on LULUCF to the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP), 8 December 2009
Iceland (2009) Joint Submission by Australia, Belarus, Canada, European Community and its Member States, Iceland, Japan, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Russian Federation, Switzerland and Ukraine, 11 June 2009, FCCC/KP/AWG/2009/MISC.13/Add.1
Iceland (2009) A proposal for an amendment to decision 16/CMP.1 on Land use, land-use change and forestry, 24 April 2009, FCCC/KP/AWG/2009/MISC.11
Assumptions
Targets for 2020 were calculated from the most recent national inventory submissions (2012).
We calculated Iceland's LULUCF accounting quantities in 2020 for afforestation, reforestation and deforestation using the current Kyoto rules. Iceland has submitted new information on forest management reference levels using a net-net approach with a projected reference level for 2013-2020.
While Iceland elected to account for revegetation for the first commitment period, it has not provided any data for revegetation so that this has not been considered in the present analysis.
