17 September 2012: The UNFCCC Secretariat has released the report of the centralized review of the 2011 annual submission of Spain (FCCC/ARR/2011/ESP), which states that total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increased by 29.5% between between 1990 and 2009. Total GHG emissions have increased in Spain between 1990 and 2007, when the maximum value of emissions was attained, and decreased since 2007 due to the economic crisis.

The Expert Review Team (ERT) that conducted the centralized review concludes that Spain’s inventory submission was prepared 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 complete, the information is of high quality and prepared in accordance with relevant Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidance. The ERT identifies the following cross-cutting issues for improvement: enhancing the quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) system by, inter alia, reporting annually on the outcome of annual QA/QC procedures in the NIR, and increasing efforts to use more information from the EU emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) and verifiers’ reports from regional governments, and to use it to improve the accuracy of the inventory; and continuing efforts to increase transparency by providing the underlying explanations for the trends in activity data or emissions, in terms of technological and economic changes.

The ERT further formulates recommendations, including that Spain: continue with efforts to improve the accuracy of the representation of historical and current land-use data in accordance with IPCC good practice guidance for land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), and improve the methodological level and completeness of this sector; include in the NIR the national energy balance; and enhance the system for tracking of deforested land areas. [Publication: Report of the Individual Review of the Annual Submission of Spain Submitted in 2011]