The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) signed a partnership agreement with the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) at the the UN Climate Change Conference COP 25 to launch a three-year pilot project aimed at developing Article 6 Activities under the Paris Agreement.
Article 6 seeks to assist governments in implementing their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) through voluntary international cooperation.
Through the Mobilizing Article 6 Trading Structure (MATS) programme, the partnership will enable SEA to share its experience with low and middle-income countries in implementing greenhouse gas emission mitigation activities through bilateral and multilateral engagements.
“The Swedish Energy Agency is committed to supporting the global effort to reduce emissions to meet the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals and contribute to its implementation,” said Robert Andrén, Director General of the Swedish Energy Agency. “As part of that commitment we are working hard to usher in a new wave of national and sectoral scale mitigation activities. We are thrilled to partner with GGGI in order to achieve common goals and overcome some of the inevitable challenges faced by early actors.”
GGGI is already engaged on Article 6-related activities with several donors, including the Ministry of Climate and Environment of Norway and the Klik Foundation based in Switzerland.
“The MATS program, a new priority area of work, will build on GGGI’s technical assistance with members and partners to support their achievement of NDCs and further increase ambition through readiness activities, accessing climate finance and establishing measurement, reporting and verification systems,” said Susanne Pedersen, GGGI’s Assistant Director-General and Head of Investment and Policy Services Division. “Through its model of being embedded within government and working with partners, we feel that we are well positioned to deliver the programme in collaboration with SEA, leveraging its wealth of experience in carbon markets.”
The GGGI-SEA MATS programme will take a holistic approach towards supporting countries to refine existing or create new institutional frameworks to make them Article 6 compliant and assess the mitigation potential of activities, and test the design of the framework through practical authorization of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) transactions under Mitigation Outcome Purchase Agreements (MOPAs).