Recommendations from the Stage 3 Trial Review Karin Kindbom 7th Joint TFEIP & EIONET meeting 31 October-2 November, Thessaloniki, Greece

Outline What has been done? Stage 3 review experiences and discussions from Review Expert Panel meeting in Amersfoort, June 2006 (16th TFEIP meeting) Recommendations

What has been done so far? A trial stage 3 centralised review was agreed at the 6th joint TFEIP/EIONET meeting in Rovaniemi, Finland, October 2005. Parties were asked to voluntarily take part. The trial centralised review was performed in late February 2006. Review Expert Panel meeting in Amersfoort, June 2006, discussing experiences from the trial centralised review. The trial review and experiences are documented in Chapter 4 of “Inventory review 2006”, EMEP Technical Report MSC-W 1/2006. The TF has prepared “Draft methods and procedures for the technical review of air pollutant inventories reported under the Convention and its Protocols” (EB.AIR/GE.1/2005/7, annex III) and submitted it to the EMEP Steering Body;

Overall objective of the trial stage 3 review To gain experience with in-depth review within the framework of the LRTAP Convention; assess the usefulness of the present Guidelines and the Emission Inventory Guidebook assess value added from a stage 3 review over stages 1&2 test and clarify procedures, scope and management

Trial centralised review: outputs Individual review conclusions and recommendations for each participating Party communicated back only to the Party Feedback on the process to the Task Force as feedback on the reporting and review process as a basis for discussions on future development of the review process The work was carried out with ETC-ACC support

Experiences and discussions: Usefulness of Guidelines for review purposes Clear guidance regarding what criteria to review against necessary in order to be able to assess completeness. An IIR is necessary for review purposes and should be made mandatory; level of detail? needs to suit review and provide transparency everything cannot be in IIR if more info in the IIR, review will provide better feedback Activity data that can be used in verifying emissions should be made available. A number of recommendations for the reporting template to improve the comparability, transparency and consistency of data reported by countries. Completeness; requirements on a country-specific basis. Comparability, parties allocate to different codes, not clear enough Transparency, codes “other” Consistency and aggregations: present mix of aggregated and detailed sectors makes summaries for assessment purposes difficult allows inconsistent reporting of aggregated emissions and increases the risk of errors

Experiences and discussions: Usefulness of Guidebook for review purposes GB discussion extensive for key categories and pollutants GB generally OK for review not strong enough, inadequate for review purposes for some pollutants/categories need clear default methods to review against need to distinguish need for inventory compilers and inventory reviewers useful for completeness, i.e. to identify sources of pollutants is it possible to have GB suited both for compliance and improvement?

Recommendations: Guidelines and Guidebook A number of items identified from the review as problematic already fed into: the Guidelines revision process, the planned Guidebook improvement.

Experiences and discussions: Usefulness of stage 1&2, value added from stage 3 Stage 1&2 review very useful input to the detailed review and an excellent way of giving feedback to countries. A number of benefits from participating in a Stage 3 review, for the countries being reviewed and for the experts participating in the review. Stage 3 provides country specific feedback and recommendations to help in prioritisation and inventory improvement, A deeper assessment of comparability possible in Stage 3 review, e.g. methodologies and emission factors used. Very useful input to the detailed review. Recommended improvement of time-series test and extend number of IEFs

Recommendation: Review stages Review Stages 1, 2 and 3 are all valuable and useful and should be retained

Experiences and discussions: Purpose of stage 3 review Objective of the review must be clear validation (good enough, GL) verification (numbers make sense?) Expectations on individual review reports/review process to be used as lever for resources help prioritising funding/inventory improvement sharing of best practice and information across countries During review, problems with objective and aim of review check with what extent inventories are consistent with ceilings

Experiences and discussions: Procedures, scope and management Centralised review is an efficient stage 3 model Harmonisation with UNFCCC desirable but not possible to copy directly LRTAP review process should be flexible enough to potentially focus on different issues in different years Mandate, roles and responsibilities to be defined for participating experts, for secretariat and administrative functions. Mandate and procedures for communication; for parties involved, which parties involved? relation to policy processes? Need for collaboration Convention/EU Procedures and scope, much discussion, not clear

Experiences and discussions: Timing and resource requirements Timing and resource requirements depend on future review scope and focus. Once established resource requirements might be lower. Review process must be compatible with existing flow, not impose time consuming process.

Recommendation: Purpose, procedures, scope and management Further work is needed

Recommended future steps To develop structure for Stage 3 review during 2007, not perform another stage 3 review; Methods and Procedures document lays down stage 3 review mandate, but scope is not elaborated aim for end-2007, a more formal proposal for stage 3 review an idea of resources needed to report to SB, output could be to perform review in 2008 could consider providing a series of options to SB for their selection based on available resources