Published:
10 Apr 2008 - The European Environment Agency
presented today a new greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions viewer, where users can display
emission data broken down by Member State,
year and trading sector in a user-friendly
interface. With this viewer, the EU Emission
Trading Scheme (ETS) data become significantly
more accessible for a wide range of users.
Over 11 000 industrial
installations in Europe — which represent
close to half of Europe's emissions of CO2
— are covered by the EU's Emission Trading
Scheme. The ultimate goal of the EU ETS
is to help EU Member States achieve conformity
with their present and future commitments
to combat climate change under the Kyoto
Protocol, and it is the first international
trading system for GHG in the world.
The new display tool
incorporates data from the Community Independent
Transaction Log (CITL), the emissions registry
run by the European Commission for GHG.
Users can retrieve data on the amount of
emissions generated by various trading sectors
(combustion plants, oil refineries, coke
ovens, iron and steel plants, and factories
making cement, glass, lime, brick, ceramics,
pulp and paper) in any EU Member State for
the first period of the ETS, namely 2005–2007.
In addition, the viewer
features up-to-date information to determine
if a particular trading sector was granted
too many or too few allowances compared
to their actual level of emissions.
In spite of the complexity
of the data contained under the CITL, the
viewer has a simple interface. Data come
in a single document, encapsulated in a
popular spreadsheet format (Excel). Once
the file is downloaded to a given computer,
the user may generate graphs — with just
a few clicks — and retrieve country or sector-specific
information. A comprehensive manual with
instructions, in electronic format, is included
in the viewer.
The CITL viewer complements
the EEA greenhouse gas viewer — an interactive
tool that allows easy web access to the
main emissions data submitted by the European
Community to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
