15 April 2009: The UNFCCC Secretariat has released the report of the individual review of the greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory submissions of Denmark and Japan submitted in 2007 and 2008 (FCCC/ARR/2008/DNK) and (FCCC/AAR/2008/JPN). The expert review team (ERT) finds both inventories to be generally in line with the Revised 1996 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines, the IPCC good practice guidance and the IPCC good practice guidance for land use, land-use change and Forestry (LULUCF).

Regarding Denmark, the ERT finds the submissions to be of good quality and welcomes the planned methodological and data improvements in the LULUCF sector that are expected in the 2009 submission, which will further sharpen the accuracy of the inventory estimates and help to refine the uncertainty analysis. The ERT continues to recommend that Denmark fully incorporate emissions data and methods used in Greenland into the relevant sectors discussed in the national inventory report (NIR), as well as into the crosscutting analyses (e.g. key category analysis, quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC), uncertainty, and recalculations). The ERT also recommends that Denmark continue to report common reporting format (CRF) summary table 2 specifically for Greenland territory in an annex to the NIR, in an effort to improve transparency and help towards the assessment of emissions during the commitment period because of the different targets for the European territory of Denmark and for Greenland. The ERT recognizes that Denmark may face difficulties in fully implementing this recommendation.
For Japan, the ERT finds the submission to be complete in terms of geographical coverage, years and sectors, and generally complete in terms of categories and gases. Japan’s inventory system utilizing sector experts and ministries in the preparation of the inventory is found to be very good. However, Japan still reports emissions from waste incineration with energy recovery in the waste sector instead of in the energy sector, which is not in line with the IPCC good practice guidance. In addition, Japan does not report actual emissions of HFCs, PFCs and SF6 for the years 1990–1994. The NIR is found to be complete with many of the issues raised in previous ERT reports having been addressed. The NIR provides information on the methodologies used, activity data and emission factors, and the ERT welcomes the improvements made by Japan in response to previous reviews such as including more information on uncertainties, time-series consistency, QA/QC and verification, and category-specific recalculations. However, the ERT notes the need to provide more information and explanation in the NIR, including in annexes if needed, to facilitate future reviews. Such information should include better documentation of drivers for the emission trends and information outlining national system actions and plans for the following year (as contained in the document provided by Japan to the ERT during the review week). [Denmark’s Inventory] [Japan’s Inventory]