Transport work and emissions in MRV

EU has decided on a system for Monitoring, Reporting and Verifying emissions of carbon dioxide from ships in Europe starting in 2018. This means that ship-owners will have to develop systems for the mandatory reporting and also that there will be a potential data source for assessing emissions and fuel consumption for ships. This report is the outcome of a pre-study within the Lighthouse cooperation performed during 2017. It is a collaboration between IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and Chalmers with valuable input from Swedish Orient Line and Stena Line. The work has been done as a desktop study, through interviews with stakeholders, and also included a workshop with discussions on MRV.

Summary

EU has decided on a system for Monitoring, Reporting and Verifying (MRV) emissions of carbon dioxide from ships in Europe starting 1st of January 2018. This means that ship-owners must develop systems for reporting and that a potential data source for assessing emissions and fuel consumption for ships will emerge. This report demonstrates the methods for preparing the data for reporting, looks at uncertainties and drawbacks and discusses the potential use of the data.

Drawbacks identified with MRV, are that other green-house gases, such as methane, not are included, and that upstream emissions, from fuel production and fuel transportation, also are excluded. Further, the reporting procedures for biogenic CO2 are still unclear.

However, when large amounts of data are made public in the summer of 2019 there will be an opportunity to improve benchmarking and emission calculations, especially related to transport work, which is important for increasing accuracy of emission inventory studies and cost-benefits studies of shipping.

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