Climate Change Initiatives

Facing the climate change challenges for the region, BECC is currently involved in promoting state greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventories and projections, and mitigation and adaptation planning efforts, as well as providing regional energy assessments that could identify future projects and other capacity development initiatives for the region.

Comprehensive Climate Action Planning in Mexico

Since 2006 through a regional partnership, BECC, and the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) have supported the completion of comprehensive GHG emissions inventories and forecasts for all six Mexican border states. Along with regional capacity building and training and the launch of comprehensive climate action plans (SCAP), this work done in close coordination with Mexico’s National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) develops methods for calculating and projecting GHG emissions.

CCS uses an inclusive and collaborative step-wise process for SCAP development. This process consists of a first phase of 4 steps involving the identification of priority policy options derived from a full range of criteria based potential options, followed by a 6-step second phase involving the expert design of the priority policy options selected under Phase 1, the quantification of GHG reductions and costs/savings and macroeconomic and investment impacts resulting from the implementation of such options, and the identification of cross-sector integration needs and impacts.

Phase 1

1. Organize local capacities in the Advisory Group (AG) and Technical Workgroups (TWGs)
2. Review the GHG emissions Inventory and & Forecasts
3. Identify a comprehensive range of potential climate change mitigation policy options, including enhancements of existing actions and identification of new potential actions
4. Identify priority policy options for policy design and quantitative analysis

Phase 2

5. Develop draft policy design proposals with key design parameters to support analysis
6. Quantify initial GHG reductions and costs/savings, as well as other direct impacts (energy, etc.) at the individual “stand alone” policy option level
7. Fully develop policy option templates (series of policy design and analysis components for each policy option using a standard template with a full range of key components)
8. Develop policy design, mechanisms or analysis alternatives to eliminate feasibility obstacles, as needed through the iterative process
9. Finalize individual option results and integrative or aggregate results, and address final barriers to consensus as needed to achieve maximum group consensus
10. Complete reports and issue recommendations