Philippines

Historical emissions from 1990 to 2023 were taken from the PRIMAP National Historical Greenhouse Gas Emissions Database (Gütschow et al., 2024). The data is provided in AR5.

For the LULUCF sector, the historical GHG emissions data is taken from UNFCCC database as officially reported by the country for years 1994 and 2000, and 2010, 2015, and 2020 emissions were taken from the government website (NICCDIES, 2021; UNFCCC, 2017) .

The 2030 NDC target, submitted in 2021, is based on a cumulative BAU of 3,340.3 MtCO₂e for the period of 2020-2030; however, the NDC does not include any details on how this BAU was calculated. An annual sector by sector breakdown was subsequently published by the Climate Change Commission (CCC, 2022). We use this information as the basis of our calculations.

GWP values

The NDC update and CCC document do not mention the Global Warming Potential values used. The CCC has used GWP from the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in past stakeholder consultations and so we assume that that is the basis upon which these NDC calculations have been prepared (CCC, 2020). The BAU scenario was converted to AR5 GWPs using the historical average sectoral AR5-to-AR4 ratio from the past decade.

LULUCF

The NDC update and CCC document do not explicitly discuss the role of the land sector in the NDC target. The 3,340.3 MtCO₂e cumulative BAU does include LULUCF, the details for which are provided in the CCC’s document. The NDC update describes the target sectoral coverage as ‘agriculture, wastes, industry, transport, and energy’. We take this statement to mean that efforts in the land sector do not fall within the scope of the Philippines’ target. According to the CCC’s figures, the land use represents a small net sink in 2020 (-24 MtCO₂e), which will shrink over the course of the decade to become a small source of emissions in 2030 (3.8 MtCO₂e).

Target quantification

We apply the target reductions to the 2030 BAU value provided in the CCC’s document to calculate 2030 emissions including LULUCF. As the CAT excludes LULUCF from its analysis and the Philippines will not rely on LULUCF measures to achieve its NDC target, we subtract the LULUCF BAU emissions (3.8 MtCO₂e) to derive the target value excluding LULUCF.

We derive our current policy projection from one main source, the Philippines Energy Plan 2023–2050. The current policy projection is based on the Philippines Energy Plan (2023-2050) reference scenario. The PEP 2023–2050 scenarios only include energy-related CO2 data. To calculate remaining GHG emissions, the CAT has combined the PEP 2023-2050 scenario with non-CO₂ energy data, estimated using a 5-year historical trend, and using the growth rates for non-CO₂ data from the US EPA (2019). All projections data was harmonised with the latest historical year.

The upper and lower end of the range is based on the Philippines Energy Plan (2023-2050) two Clean Energy Scenarios, with the same methodology as for current policy projections.

This assessment uses values from the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) for all its figures and time series. The Philippines' assessments conducted between December 2018 (COP24) and June 2023 used GWP values from the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), and before that, those from the Second Assessment Report (SAR).