New MobiliseYourCity Emissions Calculator to enable better informed mobility policies
The MobiliseYourCity Partnership is proud to release the MobiliseYourCity Emissions Calculator.
In May 2020, the MobiliseYourCity Partnership released the MobiliseYourCity Emissions Calculator. The MobiliseYourCity Emissions Calculator is intended to help local, regional or national authorities model the GHG emissions of their transport system. With sufficient input data, the Calculator creates an inventory of the current emissions in a city, can model business-as-usual transport emissions scenario until 2050, and projects how that would change when a city is put on a more sustainable mobility pathway. The MobiliseYourCity Partnership built on the expertise of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) to develop the Emissions Calculator. The Emissions Calculator has been tested on the ground and is constantly being improved based on user-feedback.
Measuring emissions is essential for planning, monitoring and evaluating public policies. It has also become a key criterion to access climate finance.
When preparing a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP), conducting an emissions inventory helps mobility planners and policy makers understand the current emissions culprits and identify the transport measures that present the greatest opportunities to transform the transport system. While the business as usual scenario allows to understand the impact of doing nothing, climate scenarios can help model the impact of several policies to take information-based decisions and identify key mitigation levers. These models also allow decision-makers to define exact targets.
As cities begin to implement the measures that were identified in the planning phase, the MobiliseYourCity Emissions Calculator enables cities and countries to monitor whether they are on track to meet their objectives. This monitoring function is often an imperative for actors who need to report to financing institutions. The Emissions Calculator is also giving cities the possibility to keep one step ahead in the obligation of their government to report on NDCs.
Climate considerations are increasingly important to financiers when appraising projects for finance. Cities and countries will have a considerable comparative advantage if they can present a rigorous model of projected emissions reduction and give the funder the confidence that the project implementer can measure emissions as the project progresses. By using the MobiliseYourCity Emissions Calculator, cities and countries ensure they take the best actions to improve mobility for their citizens locally and help support the fight against the climate crisis. At the same time, they increase their chances to access additional sources of finance and speed up the appraisal of their project.
The Emissions Calculator is available in English, French, Spanish on our Knowledge Platform. You can download it together with the User manual, video tutorials and a methodological guide on Monitoring and Reporting for GHG emissions.