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

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

3. 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 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;

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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?

8. 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.

9. 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

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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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.

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

15. 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