CO2 impact assessment methodologies for applicants and funding programme owners

From 30 to 31 January 2024, the Policy Learning Platform is organising a peer review for the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Energy, Transportation, and Housing - State of Hessen, in Germany. 

Many public funding programmes in Europe fund projects that aim at decarbonisation and intend to reward the best proposals. But how to identify the “best” proposals? The CO2 impact is typically taken as proxy for multiple environmental impacts. Most programmes currently ask applicants to quantify their projects’ expected CO2 impact. There are no simple and standard methods for assessing the CO2 impact, and therefore, it is hard to compare the merit of competing proposals ex-ante and to make CO2 impact an award criteria.

The Hessen Ministry of Economics has already joined forces with 5 other German regions and developed ESTEM, a standardised approach of calculating the equivalent climate impact of measures of efficient use of materials in small and medium sized enterprises (SME).

From the perspective of the State government that funds projects with the goal of decreasing CO2 emissions, the comparability of CO2 impacts and the ease of use of tools are crucial. Therefore, the Ministry wants to discuss a.o. the following questions with peers from other funding bodies: