E-PRTR dataflow managementIntroduction and informal review process 2009-2014

Eva GoossensHead of Industrial Pollution GroupAir and Climate Change Programme

Eionet NRC workshop on Industrial PollutionCopenhagen 4th March 2015

1. European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) reporting‐ Legal framework‐ Introduction to the technical aspects of reporting‐ Timelines for reporting (MS and EU)

2. EEA’s Informal data review‐ Rationale‐ Focus changes over the years

• 2009 – 2011• 2012 – 2014

3. (Incompleteness checks introduced in 2014)

Overview of the presentation

E-PRTR reporting – legal framework and technical process

1. Legal framework• E-PRTR Regulation (EC) No 166/2006 implementing the Kiev Protocol

on PRTR (to the Aarhus convention)

• Article 7.2: annual reporting on releases and transfers from E-PRTR facilities

• releases to air, water and/or land above pollutant thresholds (Annex II)• off-site transfers of waste water above pollutant thresholds (Annex II)• waste transfers above thresholds defined in article 5.1. (b). .

• ’Bottom-up’ reportingMS reports are compiled on the basis of information reported by operators to the competent authorities

2. Technical process• Reporting platform: Eionet’s Reportnet platform = single repository of all submissions• XML format• Valdiation tool: online and off-line

E-PRTR reporting – MS reporting deadlines

• Official deadline for MS submissions31 March (for year-2) or 15 months after the end of the reporting year - Article 7.2.(b)

• Resubmissions ‐ No official provision for data resubmissions‐ Agreed procedure: 31 March = at the same time as submission

deadline for the most recent data‐ Rationale: improvement of the data quality of the overall dataset‐ (During the first 5 years also an autumn resubmission)

E-PRTR reporting – EU deadline for publication

• Official deadline for EU publication:

30 April (for year-2) or within 16 months after the end of the reporting year – Article 7.3.(b)

• Practise over the years:

• 2010-2014: early May – early June

• Reasons:‐ Late deliveries by countries‐ Corrections by countries in April/May (due to substantial mistakes)

• Commission decision from 2014 onwards:

• Publication early June• allowing for

‐ an internal summary digest of the data‐ Ad-hoc data resubmission (only in exceptional cases)

• Support to countries in improving the dataset

• results summarised in an ETC/ACM technical paper

• 2-stages approach• Stage 1: analysis within the E-PRTR dataset

‐ Focus on outlier identifications: e.g. mistakes in units by countries skewing the overall statistics

‐ Numerous queries analysing the consistency across countries, within sectors, across years (timeseries), etc

‐ Development of country-specific Excel files based on the full dataset

EEA’s informal review – Early years 2009-2011 (1)

• Stage 2: comparisons with other datasets‐ Focus on consistency of information with other datasets such as:

‐ GHG: EU MM inventory and EU ETS‐ Air Pollutants: CLRTAP/NEC inventories‐ Water pollutants:

‐ UWWTP data ‐ SoE data on water‐ fisheries information

‐ Waste: ‐ Eurostat Waste statistics,‐ transboundary shipment of waste

• Specifically in 2009: geographical check through a comparison of of the geographical coordinates with the address information

EEA’s informal review – Early years 2009-2011 (2)

• Results after first 3 years‐ re-occuring data reporting mistakes‐ data gaps remaining‐ remaining inconsistencies between bottom-up (E-PRTR) and top-

down inventories (NEC/CLRTAP/EU MM) remaining

• Constraints‐ resource demanding process (EEA & ETC/ACM)‐ lack of information on EU level regarding the capacity or activity

level of the facilities (primary data for data quality checking not available at EU level)

EEA’s informal review – period 2012-2014 (1)

• Approach change for 2012-2014:

rely on countries for data quality improvement as the holders of all the primary information ‐ EEA informal review scaled down to

‐ outlier identification and ‐ comparison with air pollutant and GHG data

‐ Summary information provided to countries in a standardised Word file

‐ Full datafiles available for countries to allow for further quality checking at national level

‐ No EU summary report

EEA’s informal review – period 2012-2014 (2)

Incompleteness checks in 2014 - rational

• Remaining issues‐ Data outliers due to misreporting (less frequent than in the early years)‐ Data gaps such as

‐ Missing release/transfer reports for facilities‐ Missing facilities‐ Large differences regarding pollutants reported in specific sectors (within

a country and between countries)‐ Remaining inconsistencies between bottom-up (E-PRTR) and top-down

inventories (NEC/CLRTAP/EU MM)‐ Reasons behind the data quality issues are unclear

• Limited data credibility to use data for‐ policy evaluation, ‐ indicators on industrial pollution, etc.

• Trial for 2014: incompleteness checks

Note: all methodology documents, reports, feedback material provided to the countries across the years in the context of the E-PRTR informal review is available at: http://forum.eionet.europa.eu/x_e-prtr-reporting/library/e-prtr/