This workshop is the first of two pan-Nordic workshops in the “Sustainable Climate Neutral Nordic Municipalities” research project funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Working Group for Climate and Air (NKL). This project aims to synthesize the best practices for how municipalities can work to quantify consumption-based emissions and sinks. A workshop about municipality work with carbon sinks will be held 26 October 2022.

The workshop is for employees in municipal administrations in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden working with sustainable consumption, GHG accounting, climate budgeting or adjacent topics.

The event is hosted by four Nordic research institutes: Aarhus University (AU, Denmark); Center for International Climate Research (CICERO, Norway), Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI, Sweden); Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE, Finland) as part of a project financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Programme

09.00-09.10

1. Welcome and introductions

1. Presentation of the project “Sustainable Climate Neutral Nordic Municipalities” (Ragnhild Børke, CICERO)
2. Nordic ambitions and aspirations (Nordic Council of Ministers)

09.10-09.20

2. Methods for estimating consumption-based emissions: a stepwise approach from “simple and rough” to “advanced but work intensive” methods (Hans Sanderson, Aarhus University)

09.20-09.30

3. Nordic municipalities’ work with consumption-based emissions estimates – key findings from a survey to municipalities (Katarina Axelsson, SEI/Laura Saikku, SYKE)

09.30-10.00

4. Break-out session 1:

Municipalities own consumption:

• How do municipalities currently work with consumption-based emissions from their own organizations?
• What are the main challenges and opportunities?
• What methods and approaches are currently applied to follow up on consumption impact?

10.00-10.10

5. Break

10.10-10.50

6. Examples from Nordic municipalities:

1. Aarhus municipality’s work with scope 3 emissions for the municipality as an organisation and as a society (Jeppe Deleuran Kristensen, Aarhus municipality, Denmark)
2. Malmö municipality on its climate goals: to reach net zero emissions from the municipality’s operations by 2030, and to reach a level of consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 that are well on the way to a sustainable level (Gunilla Andersson, Malmö municipality, Sweden)
3. City of Turku’s work towards ambitious climate targets (Miika Meretoja, City of Turku, Finland)
4. Asker municipality’s work on quantifying and mitigating consumption-based emissions (Bente Støa, Asker municipality, Norway)

10.50-11.20

7. Break-out session 2:

Consumption in households and businesses:

• What challenges and opportunities have municipalities identified with regards to reducing consumption-based emissions from households and businesses (scope 3) and what role do they want to take?
• What methods and approaches are currently used?

11.20-11.30

8. Wrap-up plenary discussion (Hans Sanderson, Aarhus University)

The discussions in the break-out groups will be held in English or Scandinavian languages depending on the preferences of the group members.