In Senegal, the agriculture and energy sectors are the two main sources of emissions representing 47% and 36% of total emissions in 2017, excluding LULUCF. Emissions from the agriculture sector will continue to increase through 2030 with enteric fermentation remaining the major category of emissions from this sector.¹

Though the agriculture sector represented almost half of Senegal’s emissions in 2017, the energy sector is expected to replace agriculture as the largest source of emission in Senegal by 2022, representing more than 50% of the country’s emissions.¹ This is mostly driven by an increase in energy demand through growing population and expanding energy access. Absolute energy emissions have increased by approximately 110% since 2010.¹ Within the energy sector, the power and transport sectors make up the largest shares of CO₂ emissions.

The remaining sources of emissions are waste and industrial processes. While emissions from the waste sector are projected to slightly increase, emissions from industrial processes are expected to remain stable between 2025 and 2030.¹

¹ Republic of Senegal. Contribution déterminée au niveau national du Sénégal. (2020).

² Ministère du Pétrole et des Énergies. Système d’information énergétique (SIE) du Sénégal. (2019).

³ African Development Bank. National Climate Change Profile: Senegal. (2018).

⁴ Tchanche, B. Energy Supply and Consumption in Senegal. in Sustaining Tomorrow via Innovative Engineering 55–82 (WORLD SCIENTIFIC, 2021). doi:10.1142/9789811228032_0002.

⁵ IEA. Africa Energy Outlook 2019. (2019).

⁶ Dieng, M. Face au défi climatique, comment les syndicats peuvent-ils accompagner les efforts du Sénégal dans sa transition énergétique? Equal Times. (2020).

⁷ Ly, Ibrahima; Faye, Yvonne; Diop, Abdou; Kane, Khoudia; Diop, Kader; Sarr, Bassirou; Diallo, Aissatou; Ndiaye, Saboury; Sarr, Ousmane Fall; Senghor, Mame Satou; Faye, Antoine; Ndour, Abdou; Niasse, Seynabou Diouf; Diedhiou, Abdou Aziz; Diakhate, Adiara Ka, S. ProGREEN Senegal Renewable Energy Assessment. (2021).

⁸ Ministère de l’Économie des Finances et du Plan. Plan Sénégal Émergent (PSE) Plan d’Actions Prioritaires (2019-2023). (2018).

⁹ Ministère du Pétrole et des Energies. Lettre de Politique de Développement du Secteur de l’Energie (LPDSE) 2019-2023. (2019).

¹⁰ In analysed pathways, the energy and power sector assume already a certain amount of carbon dioxide removal technologies, in this case bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

¹¹ While global cost-effective pathways assessed by the IPCC Special Report 1.5°C provide useful guidance for an upper-limit of emissions trajectories for developed countries, they underestimate the feasible space for such countries to reach net zero earlier. The current generation of models tend to depend strongly on land-use sinks outside of currently developed countries and include fossil fuel use well beyond the time at which these could be phased out, compared to what is understood from bottom-up approaches. The scientific teams which provide these global pathways constantly improve the technologies represented in their models – and novel CDR technologies are now being included in new studies focused on deep mitigation scenarios meeting the Paris Agreement. A wide assessment database of these new scenarios is not yet available; thus, we rely on available scenarios which focus particularly on BECCS as a net-negative emission technology. Accordingly, we do not yet consider land-sector emissions (LULUCF) and other CDR approaches.

¹² Senegal conditional NDC is provided in Global Warming Potentials (GWP) from the Second Assessment Report (SAR) and equals 27 MtCO₂e/yr or 29.5% below BAU. This translates in 59% emissions reduction above 2010, base year provided in the NDC as reference for the BAU scenario. Baseline year referenced in the NDC for the BAU scenario and subsequent NDC targets are excluding forestry contributions and biomass and total aggregated contribution to the NDC suggested that LULUCF emissions are excluded. We therefore assume that the NDC targets are excluding LULUCF.

¹³ Historical base year 2010 provided in the NDC differs significantly from the PRIMAP-Hist historical source used in this analysis (around 28%), we there provide a range for the NDC. The upper bound of the NDC is based on an estimated BAU excluding LULUCF scaled to historical dataset excluding LULUCF used in the analysis: PRIMAP-Hist 2019 and in Global Warming Potentials AR4. We apply then the conditional NDC emissions reduction target of -29.5%. The lower bound of the NDC is based on the provided NDC target converted to global warming potentials AR4 using the ratio SAR/AR4 from the PRIMAP-Hist 2019 dataset. See assumptions section.