The Energy sector expert(s) on your team should, obviously, check each Party’s Reference Approach calculations for CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Although the Reference Approach is the only explicit verification exercise required in the Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines and the UNFCCC reporting guidelines, a Party is encouraged by the IPCC Good Practice Guidance to conduct other verification exercises. For example, the IPCC provides a separate “check method” for CH4 from wastewater treatment, which can be used to help verify reported emissions. Your review team should investigate other attempts by a Party to verify particular emission or removal estimates using independent analyses. Verification exercises can help to improve the quality of the original inventory estimate and lower the perceived uncertainty. In particular, there are some cases where international statistics are available which can be compared with a Party’s own activity data. Although, these international statistics are unlikely to be more accurate than a Party’s own data (or are likely to originate from the same source), they can be a useful check to identify potential transcription or calculation errors. Some of the tables in Part I of the Synthesis and Assessment report include comparison tables between activity data as well as emissions data indexed using international data (e.g., landfill methane emissions per capita using UN statistics). If a Party’s emissions appear to be atypical relative to international norms, then you should investigate to ensure that the Party’s national circumstances are an adequate explanation. |
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