RIVM report xxxxxx xxx

RIVM report 773301 001 / NRP report 410200 051 page 31 of 142
The report describes a number of ways to estimate the quality and uncertainty of national
greenhouse gas emission inventories. It can be concluded that measuring concentrations of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is not the only independent method to verify inventories because
measurements and atmospheric models also contain errors and uncertainties. Comparisons with
independent inventories on national, regional and global scales can provide more insight into the
quality of the inventories. Analysis showed that national inventories from industrialised countries, as
reported in the 1DWLRQDO &RPPXQLFDWLRQV are not transparent. Compliance to the Kyoto Protocol
cannot be reviewed on the basis of this information alone. A more detailed standard reporting format
is recommended for national inventories. A review for the Kyoto Protocol can thus be made on the
basis of similar information from all industrialised countries. Precise and complete information on
emissions from non-Annex-I countries is still missing. A lack of statistics on long-term trends and a
lack of country-specific emission factors make national inventories from these countries incomplete
and inaccurate, especially for agriculture, forestry and land-use change. Energy statistics could also
be much improved.
From the viewpoint of validating the EDGAR 2.0 emissions, we summarise here the conclusions
for each of the three greenhouse gases that were compared.
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For CO 2 , the difference between the estimated global budget of fossil fuels and the sum of the
available inventories is small (