2013 EU ETS Accreditation and Verification Forum

Presentations and discussions addressed increasingly relevant aspects to EU ETS accreditation and verification as the first year of EU ETS phase three progresses. Key aims for the Forum were identified as ensuring consistent understanding of phase three requirements, raising awareness of available guidance and templates and providing reassurance concerning supporting activities, including timely NAB peer reviews and accreditation of verifiers.

The programme of the A&V Forum was mainly broken down into four sessions:

• Providing information on the Monitoring and Reporting Regulation (MRR) and Accreditation and Verification Regulation (AVR), and the two suites of supporting guidance documents and templates that have been developed;
• Learning from the European cooperation for Accreditation (EA) and from representative NABs in Italy, Hungary and the UK how preparations for accreditations according to AVR requirements are progressing;
• Providing CAs an opportunity to highlight their views concerning AVR requirements that impact on their roles, such as information exchange with the NABs, waiver of site visits and dealing with improvement reports concerning verifier recommendations; and
• Learning from verifiers and NABs how verification related challenges under the new AVR are being met.

These four sessions showed that preparations for complying with the phase three requirements are well on track, but emphasised the importance of maintaining cooperation and exchange of information.

Further discussions highlighted that consistent interpretation and application of the AVR is imperative to ensuring a harmonised approach: the available guidance and templates is enabling a single compliance system for accreditation and verification.

Recognising the challenges ahead, all stakeholders (CAs, NABs and verifiers) noted that the conditions for much better coordination are now in place.

The Day Chair concluded that another A&V Forum in 2014 would be very well placed to review outcomes, experiences and recommendations following completion of the 2013/2014 compliance cycle and finalised accreditations and verifications of 2013 emissions reports.

Proceedings

• A&V Forum Programme
• Day Chair Introduction and Aims for the A&V Forum
• Conclusions and Recommendations

Presentations

• Session I: Introduction to the MRR and AVR and available guidance and templates
  • Introduction by the Commission
  • MRR guidance and templates
  • AVR guidance and templates
• Session II: Activities on the part of the European cooperation for Accreditation and National Accreditation Bodies
  • EA Roadmap for implementing AVR requirements regarding NABs
  • Functioning of the EA Network and review of EA-6/03
  • Italian NAB preparations for the new AVR
  • Hungarian NAB preparations for the new AVR
  • UK NAB preparations for the new AVR
• Session III: Involvement of the Competent Authorities
  • Role and responsibilities for CAs
  • Information exchange and improvement requirements
  • CA concerns in relation AVR verification of installations
  • CA concerns in relation to AVR verification of aircraft operators
• Session IV: Challenges to verifiers in the 3rd trading period
  • Verification reports and verification opinion statements
  • Verifier risk analysis
  • Verifier impartiality
  • Verifier competence and training
  • Verifier preparations in the Czech Republic
  • Mutual recognition of verifiers
  • Man-day tool (for indicative verification time estimation by NABs)

Location