12 April 2013: The UNFCCC Secretariat has released the report of the centralized review of the 2012 annual submission of Iceland (FCCC/ARR/2012/ISL), which indicates that total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for this country increased by 29.7% between 1990 and 2010.

The report also states that, in 2010, the energy sector accounted for 41.1% of total GHG emissions, while the industrial processes sector represented 39.8%, the agriculture sector 14.2%, and the waste sector 4.7%.

The Expert Review Team (ERT) that conducted the centralized review concludes that Iceland’s inventory submission was prepared generally in compliance with the UNFCCC reporting guidelines. It also concludes that the inventory submission, the common reporting format (CRF) tables and the national inventory report (NIR) are generally complete. However, the ERT underlines that Iceland has not included a number of annexes to the NIR, which are set out in the UNFCCC reporting guidelines, and identifies gaps in the reporting of emission data and associated information in the CRF tables.

The ERT further concludes that Iceland’s inventory is in line with the relevant IPCC Guidelines. The ERT identifies the following general issues for improvement: provide the currently missing annexes to the NIR in the next annual submission; improve transparency; implement the outstanding recommendations made in previous review reports; and enhance the transparency of the rationale for recalculations.

The ERT further formulates recommendations for improving methodological approaches in estimating emissions for specific sectors, including for the agriculture, land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), energy, industrial processes and waste sectors. [Publication: Report of the Individual Review of the Annual Submission of Iceland Submitted in 2012]