Argentina

Historical emissions for 1990–2016 were taken from the national GHG inventory (Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2020). The inventory provides numbers in CO2-equivalent calculated with GWP from the Second Assessment Report (SAR). We recalculated CH4 and N2O emissions using GWP from AR4. For F-gases the original values were kept, except for sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). The inventory data is also used in the Third Biennial Report.

NDC absolute emissions levels including LULUCF are provided directly in the NDC for the unconditional and conditional targets (Government of Argentina, 2016a). To distinguish LULUCF emissions from total GHG emissions and calculate its ratings, the CAT assumes that the mitigation efforts will be proportional to the sector's relevance in terms of emissions contribution, thus maintaining the share of each sector's emissions similar across the years until 2030. This assumption is in line with the information provided by the Ministry of Environment on the expected shares of emissions of each sector in the present and until 2030 (Ministry of Environment of Argentina, 2016). We also recalculate the target, that is originally communicated as an absolute number calculated using SAR GWP, to AR4 GWP. To do so, we apply the growth rate between 2016 and 2030 that the original target implies to inventory data in AR4 GWP.

In contrast to the current policy projections in the last assessment where the scenario range came from using two different external scenario projections (i.e. projections developed by National University of Buenos Aires (UNICEN) and from the mitigation scenarios prepared for the 3rd National Communication (Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2015)), the current policy projections range in this update comes from using two different GDP projections to account for the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pre-COVID-19 current policy projection, to which our assessment of the impacts of the pandemic were added, was done as follows:

• Energy sector projections developed by National University of Buenos Aires (UNICEN), in the report “Current situation and GHG emissions projections in Argentina” (Keesler et al., 2019). The document covers all energy related emissions under implemented policies until 2018. The baseline scenario has the following assumptions:
  • Accounts for the penetration of renewable energy in the power sector following the current trend
  • Adjusts the emissions curve of the power sector to capture the current development of nuclear energy
  • Accounts for barriers in the implementation of energy efficiency measures presented in the sectoral plans (buildings, industry, and transport)
  • Takes into account the significant development plan for the exploration and exploitation of fossil fuels (fracking and off-shore oil and gas production)
  • The document does not mention the carbon tax
• For the remaining sectors, we used the reference scenario projections of the National University of Buenos Aires (UNICEN), in the report “Current situation and GHG emissions projections in Argentina” (Keesler et al., 2019).
• We harmonise the projections to the inventory data by applying the growth rates of the projections to the latest available historical data point.

Similar to current policy projections, additional policy projections followed the same methodology with different assumptions:

• • For the energy sector projections, we used an alternative scenario from UNICEN (Keesler et al., 2019) that assumes full implementation of the renewable targets, additional energy efficiency measures and other mitigation measures from the sectoral plans. This set of assumptions are aligned with Energy Scenarios of 2019 from the Ministry of Energy (Ministry of Energy and Mining Argentina, 2018).
  • For the remaining sectors, we used the reference scenario projections of the National University of Buenos Aires (UNICEN), in the report “Current situation and GHG emissions projections in Argentina” (Keesler et al., 2019)

We applied a novel method to estimate the COVID-19 related dip in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 and the deployment through to 2030. The uncertainty surrounding the severity and length of the pandemic creates a new level of uncertainty for current and future greenhouse gas emissions. We first update the current policy projections using most recent emissions projections by UNICEN, prepared before the pandemic (as outlined above). We then distil the emissions intensity (GHG emissions/GDP) from this pre-pandemic scenario and apply to it most recent GDP projections that consider the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. To capture a wide range, we use two independent GDP projections: one from IMF (IMF, 2020) and one from the Central Bank of the Republic of Argentina (BCRA) (Banco Central de la República de Argentina, 2020). Since the most recent GDP projections only provide values for years 2020–2022, we use the GDP growth for after 2022 until 2030 that was used as a basis for the original pre-pandemic current policy scenario.

The CAT uses Global Warming Potential (GWP) values from the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) for all its figures and time series. Assessments completed prior to December 2018 (COP24) used GWP values from the Second Assessment Report (SAR).