Morocco

For historical emissions, we used national GHG inventory data provided by Morocco’s 1st and 2nd Biennial Update Reports (BURs) (Government of Morocco, 2016c, 2019). The historical data was revised significantly downwards in the 2nd BUR compared to data in the 1st BUR; for example, in 2012, data for all GHG emissions (incl. LULUCF) from the 2nd BUR is 21 MtCO2e lower than in the 1st BUR. There is currently no explanation for this data change, but we will update this section in case a technical annex to the 2nd BUR is published. We have chosen to use historical emissions from the 2nd BUR, as it is the most up-to-date dataset available, and have harmonised the two datasets as described below.

The 2nd BUR covers data from 2010 to 2016 while the 1st BUR covers data from 1994 to 2012. For the years 2010–2016 we directly use data from the 2nd BUR. For data from 1994 to 2009, we use values from the 1st BUR but harmonise these to the 2nd BUR data, using a scaling factor from 2010 data. For the historical years before 1994, we used a linear backward extrapolation of the trend between 1994 and 2012.

LULUCF

Morocco’s NDC targets apply to all sectors. In the CAT, we exclude LULUCF from the NDC target calculations. As Morocco’s new pledge only provides economy-wide BAU values, we have taken BAU LULUCF values for 2030 from the Third National Communication submitted to the UNFCCC in 2016, and deducted these from the economy-wide 2030 BAU scenario presented in the NDC. We have also excluded LULUCF-related mitigation measures from the long list of mitigation measures used to determine the mitigation target.

Current policy projections are based on BAU emissions projections provided in the 3rd National Communication (Government of Morocco, 2016a). In addition to the BAU scenario, the current policy projections consider several sectoral policies under implementation. The 1st and 2nd Biennial Update Reports (BURs) outline a number of policy measures and their anticipated mitigation potential. We lack up to date information on the state of implementation of some the new policies in the 2nd BUR, and therefore present our current policy scenario as a range.

For the upper end of the current policy scenario, we use the measures presented in the 1st BUR (Government of Morocco, 2016c). It considers targets for the extension of national wind farms, solar parks, and hydropower capacity by 2020, energy efficiency programmes in the building sector, public lighting and the industry sector (excluding large energy consuming industries) as well as the extension of Rabat and Casablanca tramways. The 1st BUR provides annual emission reduction estimates by 2020 and 2030 for the all the aforementioned policies (Government of Morocco, 2016c). The extension of wind, solar and hydro capacity by 2020 is estimated to reduce emissions by 11 MtCO2e annually (Government of Morocco, 2016c).

The upper end, while based on the same policies as in previous updates, is lower in our current update due to changes in historical data (see Historical emissions section for additional information)—and due to a decrease in emissions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic (see details under COVID-19 impacts section).

For the lower end of the current policy scenario, we use the measures listed in the 2nd BUR (Government of Morocco, 2019). The 2nd BUR includes the same policies as in the ‘upper end’ scenario but it also includes policies in the agriculture and waste sectors and adds mitigation from combined cycle power plants. The mitigation potential from measures in the transport sector and from renewable energy have also been revised upwards.

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 projections, prepared before the pandemic. We then distil the emission intensity (GHG emissions/GDP) from this pre-pandemic scenario and apply to it the most recent GDP projections that take into account the effect of the pandemic for the years 2020 and 2021. To capture a wide range of scenarios, we have used several different GDP growth projections for Morocco (AFDB, 2020; IMF, 2020; World Bank, 2020). The table below lists the different sources that we used and the respective GDP growth projections (in percentages) each of them predict. Given the most recent GDP projections only provide values for the next couple of years, we use the GDP growth until 2030 that was used as a basis for the original pre-pandemic current policy scenario.

Morocco previously used Global Warming Potential (GWP) values from the IPCC Second Assessment Report (SAR). In the new NDC, GWP are communicated using the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) values. The CAT reports all results using AR4 GWP.