<article><p class="lead">Supporting the switch to electric mobility (e-mobility) in developing countries is a promising activity under the Article 6 of the Paris climate agreement given e-mobility's relatively high costs and additional benefits, experts say.</p><p>The first e-mobility project under Article 6 is currently under way between Switzerland and Thailand. Switzerland aims to acquire internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) from a project in the Thai capital of Bangkok designed to accelerate investment in fleet-operated e-vehicles such as motorbikes, tricycles, and cars, and in an electric vehicle battery charging infrastructure.</p><p>Under Article 6.2 of the Paris deal, countries can form bilateral agreements in which host countries receive financial support from buyer countries to invest in greenhouse gas emissions mitigation activities, generating ITMOs that can count towards the buyer countries' nationally determined contributions (NDCs).</p><p>Host countries, in signing a bilateral Article 6 agreement with a buyer country, must ensure that the activity is "additional" and would not have taken place without the support. Given e-mobility's relatively high costs — particularly in developing countries — activities in this sector are more likely to be additional than in others, according to Stephan Gill, senior officer at the South Korea-based Global Green Growth Initiative's (GGGI's) carbon pricing unit.</p><p>The relatively high costs of e-mobility can be substantially reduced by selling ITMOs based on the emissions reductions achieved thanks to the switch to e-mobility, Gill said at an online industry event hosted by GGGI this week.</p><p>Additionally, projects under Article 6.2 enable scaling and, hence, bankability. Taken individually, switching to an electric motorbike saves about 1-2 t/yr of C02 equivalent. It is only by pooling the switch to e-bikes that the necessary finance is unlocked, Gill said.</p><p>Switzerland's Article 6 project in Thailand, dubbed "Shift" and co-managed by Swiss carbon credit provider South Pole, is registered under a Thai domestic scheme aimed at decarbonising the country's transport sector.</p><p>As part of the Shift programme, an e-bus manufacturer could, for example, sell an e-bus to a bus operator at a discount that equals the ex-ante carbon reduction value of the bus operation. The bus operator will supply the data necessary to verify emissions reductions to the e-bus manufacturer.</p><p>Switzerland at present is in negotiations with the Thai government on a mitigation outcome purchase agreement (Mopa) for the Shift project. Switzerland so far has signed one Mopa with Peru through its climate action agency Klik, from which it expects to acquire its first ITMOs towards the end of next year.</p><p>Switzerland has signed deals with 11 countries under Article 6.2.</p><p>Meanwhile, South Korea is in talks with Rwanda on supporting the deployment of e-buses in the Rwandan capital of Kigali.</p><p>South Korea has started to look more seriously at Article 6 activities since the previous government late last year sharply increased the ambition of its NDC, GGGI's Gill said.</p><p>South Korea regards the transport sector as an important mitigation category, Chaewoon Oh, researcher at the Green Technology Center (GTC) in Seoul, said.</p><p>The first e-mobility projects under Article 6 are only just starting and are far more likely to be developed, Jihyun Kim of the Korea Research Institute on Climate Change said.</p><p>GTC's Oh said lessons have been learned from the experience with the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism, in which infrastructure hardly played a role in developing mitigation projects. This will be all the more crucial in e-mobility projects, Oh said.</p><p class="bylines"><i>By Chloe Jardine</i></p></article>
