The European Commission (EC) is bringing emissions from shipping into its 2009 climate and energy package. MRV is designed to progressively integrate maritime emissions into the EU’s policy for reducing domestic greenhouse gas emissions (EU regulation 2015/757). MRV requires ship owners and operators to annually monitor, report and verify CO2 emissions for vessels larger than 5,000 GT and which call at any EU port. The results will be published on a regular basis. Entered into force on 1 July 2015, the regulation will become fully effective on 1 January 2018. Shipping companies will need to prepare a monitoring plan by 31 August 2017 at the latest for each of their ships that falls under the jurisdiction of the regulation. They will have to monitor and report the verified amount of CO2 emitted by their vessels on voyages to, from and between EU ports and will also be required to provide information on energy efficiency parameters (see below). Data collection on a per-voyage basis will commence on 1 January 2018. Once the data is verified by a third-party organization and sent to a central database, presumably managed by the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), the aggregated ship emission and efficiency data will be published by the European Commission by 30 June 2019 and then every consecutive year.
Timeline:
- 31 August 2017 – Companies are to submit ship-specific monitoring plans to verifiers for approval
- 1 January 2018 – Per-voyage monitoring to start
- 30 April 2019 – Verified annual emission reports submitted to the EC
- 30 June 2019 – Emission data made publicly available by the EC
- This cycle will then repeat for subsequent years.
Monitoring and reporting
Ship owners will have to monitor the following parameters on a per-voyage basis:
-Port of departure and port of arrival, including the date and hour of departure and arrival
-Amount and emission factor for each type of fuel consumed in total
-CO2 emitted
-Distance travelled
-Time spent at sea
-Cargo carried
-Transport work
In addition to the companies reporting annually aggregated figures for the parameters, the data is to be used to calculate and report average energy efficiency.
The basis for the calculation of CO2 emissions will be the fuel consumption for voyages starting or terminating at any EU port. Fuel consumption shall be determined and calculated using one of the following methods:
-Bunker Delivery Note (BDN) and periodic stock takes of fuel tanks
-Bunker fuel tank monitoring on board
-Flow meters for applicable combustion processes
-Direct CO2 emission measurements
Verification
Accredited verifiers will have three key tasks:
-To verify ship-specific monitoring plans (completeness, accuracy, relevance and conformity)
-To verify that the annual ship-specific emission reports comply with the monitoring plans
-To verify that the figures contained in the annual ship-specific emission reports are accurate