The Netherlands has one National System for monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gases for the United Nations Confention of Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol as well as for the European Union (EU) monitoring obligations.
The National System assures the quality of annual inventory reports to the UNFCCC and EU, and ensures their suitability to demonstrate compliance with relevant requirements.
The core of the National System is the PRTR (in Dutch: emissieregistratie, ER). The PRTR holds one national dataset for emissions inventories covering some 350 pollutants to air, water and soil, and is coordinated by RIVM.
The National System is maintained by RVO in its role as National Inventory Entity (NIE).
Basic elements
The Netherlands National System encompasses the following main elements:
- Definition and allocation of the specific roles, responsibilities and tasks, worked out in more detail in procedures (see below), and in methodology reports
- Methodology reports, describing methods for emission calculations
- Agreements on the basic institutional, legal and organisational structure, including the designation of the 'single national entity'. These agreements have been laid down in contracts, legal arrangements and covenants. This also includes a legal basis for the monitoring of greenhouse gases.
- QA/QC system and programme, including quality objectives, a QA/QC-plan. Part of the quality assurance consists of regular (peer) reviews and audits, implemented to assure quality and to comply with UNFCCC and EU requirements