1 June 2009: The UNFCCC Secretariat has released the report of the individual review of the greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories submitted by Portugal in 2007 and 2008 (FCCC/ARR/2008/PRT).

The expert review team (ERT) finds the inventory 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).
The ERT reports that the 2008 inventory submission is of a high quality and covers most sectors and categories. Improvements made include, inter alia: the inclusion of an estimate of emissions from vehicles using biodiesel in road transportation for the first time for 2006; and the removal of the estimate of emissions from aluminum production under the industrial processes sector, after the quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) checks identified that aluminum smelting does not occur in Portugal.
However, the ERT also identified estimation methodologies that were not consistent with the IPCC good practice guidance for some specific categories. In addition, in the case of the LULUCF sector, the ERT identified in the national inventor report (NIR) the use of a reporting structure inconsistent with the IPCC good practice guidance for LULUCF, as well as an apparent inconsistency between the information in the NIR on annual land-use change for most land-use categories and the area available for this land-use category as reported in the common reporting format (CRF) format. With regard to the energy sector, the ERT notes that Portugal has made significant efforts to achieve the level of detail required and the separation between domestic and international flights and marine transport in accordance with the IPCC good practice guidance, however this has not yet been fully achieved. Therefore, the ERT encourages Portugal to continue in its effort to fully achieve the required level of detail and the separation between domestic and international flights and marine transport, including military fuel consumption, in its next annual inventory submission.
During the centralized review, the ERT noted that the lack of formal agreements under the current institutional arrangements in Portugal prevents the full implementation of the national system for performing the functions defined in the guidelines for national systems regarding the provision of data by governmental agencies and other entities within the national system for the preparation of the inventory, particularly for the industrial processes sector. [The Document]