**5. Energy and GHG emissions in Uganda**

Globally, energy is the main source of GHG emissions, with 70% of the global emissions emanating from fossil fuels combustion processes to generate electricity, in industry, buildings and transport, [27]. However, as an LDC, Uganda's energy consumption (especially fossil fuel consumption) is very low and electricity generation in Uganda is dominated by hydro-power which is a renewable energy source and thus the country'contribution to global GHG emissions and climate change is negligible. For example, Uganda accounts for only 0.01% of total world emissions its per capita CO2 emissions is also low at only 0.13 t (2017)4 . However, Uganda's GHG emissions have been on the rise, having slowly increased from 53 442 Gg CO2e in 2005 to 90 230 Gg CO2e in 2015 (see **Figure 5**).

The energy sector ranks third as a major source of GHG emissions in Uganda accounting for 10.7% of the country's total emissions, with dominant source being the Land Use and Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector accounting for 59.5% (53 670 Gg CO2e) of the total emissions.

It needs to be recognized that energy is an indirect driver of the LULUCF emissions because the country's high dependency on biomass energy (charcoal and firewood) is a major driver to deforestation. Indeed, Zutari [37] observes that emissions from fuelwood and charcoal are the largest contributors to the CO2 emissions in Uganda but these emissions are not accounted for under energy emissions but rather the LULUCF sector as wood removal losses. The other major sources of GHG emission are agriculture (26.9%) and waste (2.3%).

Uganda has the basic infrastructure to manage GHG inventory system which includes software, a database to hold data from all the sectors and officers to

<sup>4</sup> https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/uganda?country=~UGA)

#### **Figure 5.**

*Sectoral trends in GHG emissions for Uganda (source: [15, 33–36]).*

manage the system, and the MEMD is one of the data provider sectors [14, 15]. In addition, Uganda has made efforts to mitigate climate change by deploying decarbonized development pathways as required by the UNFCCC. Uganda's first Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) reveals that under the business-asusual (BAU) scenario GHG emissions will increase to 77.3 Million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year (MtCO2eq/yr) by 2030 but the NDC commits to 22% emission reduction of national GHG emissions in 2030 compared to business-asusual, through implementation of mitigation policies and measures, including those in energy. Various Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) actions have been development and are implemented, with those that are energy relevant revolving around improved institutional cook stoves in Ugandan schools, integrated waste management and biogas production, vehicle fuel efficiency and bus rapid Transit (BRT).
