National Inventory Reports

Overview

Under the Enhanced Transparency Framework, Parties to the Paris Agreement are required to submit biennial transparency reports (BTR) every two years, including a national inventory report (NIR) of anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The NIR may be submitted as a stand-alone report or as a component of a BTR. Parties shall submit their first NIR, either in conjunction with the BTR o or as a stand-alone report, in accordance with the modalities, procedures and guidelines (MPGs), at the latest by 31 December 2024. Parties to the Paris Agreement, submitting annual national inventory reports under the Convention shall use the MPGs for national inventory reports in years for which a BTR is not due.

Reporting requirements and guidance

For preparing their NIR, each Party shall use the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, and shall use any subsequent version or refinement of the IPCC guidelines agreed upon by the CMA. Each Party is encouraged to use the 2013 Supplement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories: Wetlands. Parties may use on a voluntary basis the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.

Each Party shall use the 100-year time-horizon global warming potential (GWP) values from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, or 100-year time-horizon GWP values from a subsequent IPCC assessment report as agreed upon by the CMA, to report aggregate emissions and removals of GHGs, expressed in CO2 eq.

Detailed requirements on definitions, national circumstances and institutional arrangements, methods, metrics and reporting guidance (including sectors and gases, as well as time series to be reported) are provided in chapter II of the MPGs (annex to decision 18/CMA.1).

NIR submissions

The NIR submission will consist of a national inventory document (NID) and the common reporting tables (CRTs). Both the outline for the NID and the CRTs were agreed by Parties to the Paris Agreement through the adoption of the “Guidance for operationalizing the modalities, procedures and guidelines for the enhanced transparency framework referred to in Article 13 of the Paris Agreement”. The CRTs are included in Annex I to decision 5/CMA.3 and are available for download here.

Parties use the ETF Reporting Tools application when preparing their CRTs for the NIR, which is accessible only by the nominated national compilers. The NID and the CRTs (generated from the ETF Reporting Tools application) are submitted using the submission portal. Based on submissions received, the secretariat will also produce synthesis reports on Parties’ NIRs.

Structure of the National Inventory Document

The detailed structure of the NID outline is provided by annex V to decision 5/CMA.3. The key elements of the outline are the following:

  • Executive summary
  • Chapter 1: National circumstances, institutional arrangements and cross-cutting information
  • Chapter 2: Trends in greenhouse gas emissions and removals
  • Chapter 3: Energy sector
  • Chapter 4: Industrial processes and product use sector
  • Chapter 5: Agriculture sector
  • Chapter 6: Land use, land-use change and forestry sector
  • Chapter 7: Waste sector
  • Chapter 8: Other sector, if applicable
  • Chapter 9: Indirect carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions
  • Chapter 10: Recalculations and improvements
  • Annexes to the national inventory document
    • Annex 1: Key categories
    • Annex 2: Uncertainty assessment
    • Annex 3: Detailed description of the reference approach and the results of the comparison of national estimates of emissions with those obtained using the reference approach
    • Annex 4: Quality Assurance/Quality control (QA/QC) plan
    • Annex 5: Any additional information, as applicable, including detailed methodological descriptions of source or sink categories and the national emission balance
    • Annex 6: Common reporting tables
  • References
Content