ANSWER

The correct answer is (d). Part I of the S&A report indicates that Austria and Luxembourg have all used country-specific or CORINAIR emission factors to evaluate their CO₂ emissions from fuel combustion from sold fuels while New Zealand, Greece, Slovakia, and Ukraine have used a combination of country-specific and IPCC default emission factors.

Ukraine did collect country-specific calorific values, but relied extensively on default carbon contents, explaining only that it could not collect country-specific values.

Slovakia provides general statements regarding the use of national calorific values and carbon content factors, but insufficient detail to determine whether they are fully in keeping with the IPCC good practice guidance.

New Zealand reports having conducted a detailed comparative analysis of IPCC default and national factors. Reviewers, especially in an in-country review, should request to see this study. More information on uncertainty in factors is available on page 137.

Luxembourg relied on the CORINAIR database for calorific values and carbon content factors. No information is reported regarding the applicability of these factors to Luxembourg, nor is there any discussion of comparisons to IPCC default values.

Greece primarily relied on CORINAIR factors for its estimates. On page 53 of Greece’s NIR it does provide a discussion of a comparative study of national carbon content factors for lignite.

Austria primarily uses the CORINAIR tool for its methodology. It provides detailed data tables in Annex 2 of its NIR, but it does not provide detailed explanation regarding the origins of the factors used. On page 65 Austria states that it uses country-specific factors and provides references on page 66 and 67.

While it is good practice to use country-specific emission factors where practicable, none of the listed Parties explicitly demonstrate compliance with the IPCC decision tree for selecting calorific values or carbon emission factors (i.e., Figure 2.2 in Section 2.1.1.2, p. 2.12 of the IPCC Good Practice Guidance). This decision tree requires that countries obtain data on the carbon content (i.e., CO₂ potential emissions factor) and calorific values of their fuels from the fuel producers and suppliers, then compare these results to the corresponding IPCC default values, undertake confirmation using laboratory analysis in cases where the difference is greater than 2 percent, and finally use the developed values if they are within the confidence limits or if the discrepancies can be reasonably explained, and otherwise, resort to using the default values. At best the listed countries provided general statements indicating that carbon and calorific values were based on national data or provided a reference for the factor. None of the Parties clearly outlined in their national inventory report the process they used to select their carbon and calorific factors. The Parties that used IPCC default values did not provide any indication that they had tried to obtain country–specific values. The Parties that used country-specific values did not provide any indication that an explicit comparison of the factors to IPCC default values was undertaken or that appropriate actions were taken based on these results.