13 August 2012: The UNFCCC Secretariat has released the report of the centralized review of the 2011 annual submission of Latvia (FCCC/ARR/2011/LVA), which states that total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions decreased by 59.7% between 1990 and 2009.

The Expert Review Team (ERT) that conducted the centralized review concludes that Latvia’s inventory submission was prepared in compliance with the UNFCCC reporting guidelines and relevant Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines. It also concludes that the inventory submission, the common reporting format (CRF) tables and the national inventory report (NIR) are generally complete. The ERT also notes Latvia’s improvements in the methods used and the recalculations for the full time series since the previous annual submission.

The ERT identifies the following cross-cutting issues for improvement: providing detailed information in the NIR on how the key category analysis and the uncertainty analysis are used to prioritize inventory improvements; continuing efforts to move to the use of higher-tier methods and country-specific data for the estimation of emissions and removals from key categories; enhancing the transparency of the reporting, in particular for trends and some assumptions.

The ERT further formulates recommendations for improving information presented, including: providing further explanations on the emission trend for navigation; revising the thresholds used in the energy sector; updating the characteristics of fuels, such as gasoline and coal, using more recent information and providing transparent information in the NIR; and continuing efforts to implement the improvement plan for land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF). [Publication: Report of the Individual Review of the Annual Submission of Latvia Submitted in 2011]