Nepal

The historical dataset between 1990 and 2000 is based on Nepal’s Second National Communication (Government of Nepal, 2014). Emissions levels for 2011 were taken from Nepal’s GHG inventory for the Third National Communication (Tribhuvan University, 2019). Values between 2000 and 2011 were interpolated. The 1994 and 2000 LULUCF value is taken from the GHG emissions profiles for Non-Annex I countries (UNFCCC, 2016). The 2011 LULUCF value is taken from Nepal’s GHG inventory for the Third National Communication (Tribhuvan University, 2019).

The current policy scenario is based on projections from Nepal’s Second National Communication for energy, industry, agriculture and waste sectors (Government of Nepal, 2014). The National Communication sketches five scenarios (BAU, Medium growth, High growth, Medium growth with mitigation and High growth with mitigation) of which two (BAU and Medium growth) have been used to form a range. The High growth scenario was disregarded since it assumes a GDP growth rate of 10% per annum which is not in line with IMF projections of Nepal’s GDP (International Monetary Fund, 2018), and seems unrealistic given an average GDP growth rate of ~4% in the last 10 years (2006–2015). The National Communication’s BAU scenario assumes 4.63% GDP growth per year, the medium growth scenario 5% per year. Both scenarios’ projections (BAU and Medium growth) for 2030 were harmonised to the latest available historical data point (2011). Finally, an independent study carried out to estimate Nepal’s energy-related emission inventory for the period 2011–2016 was used to complement the data series until 2016 and we applied the trend from the National Communication scenarios to it (Sadavarte et al., 2019). Given that the study estimates higher emission levels between 2011-2016, we obtained another (higher) range of expected emissions by 2030. The final range presented for Nepal’s current policy projections is a combination of the two above described ranges.

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).