Effective Compliance Systems: An Essential Prerequisite for International Harmonization of Emissions Trading Systems

Proceedings of the "Improving Efficiency, Effectiveness & International Harmonization of Compliance Activities in Emissions Trading" released online this week demonstrate the paramount importance of establishing a standard language and set of procedural guidelines as soon as possible to guide compliance and simplify enforcement in current systems and to create a basis for formally linking trading systems in the future.

Conference participants discussed the central role compliance plays in assuring trust and integrity within and among emissions reductions platforms. They also agreed upon the importance of developing both a common set of procedures for monitoring, reporting, and verification and a standardize language for use in registries.

Experts at the meeting called on INECE to develop and facilitate technical working groups on three key topics: Registries, Verification & Accreditation, and Monitoring & Reporting. Representatives from governments, industry, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations are invited to join specialist groups, work together to build a broad consensus, and share lessons learned. Common principles resulting from these efforts will have broad application to processes including the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation projects, voluntary offsets programs, and other emissions reduction schemes.

For further information, please visit INECE’s emissions trading resources page at http://www.inece.org/emissions/ or email .