MONITORING, REPORTING AND VERIFICATION OF EXHAUST EMISSIONS (MRV)

On Wednesday 29th of March, SNAME NTUA Greek Student Section held its second technical presentation for the year 2016-2017 during which Mr. John Kokarakis, Chairman of SNAME Greek Section and Director of Technology and Business Development Hellenic-BS-ME Zone at Bureau Veritas gave an insightful lecture on the topic of Monitoring, Reporting and Verification of Exhaust Emissions (MRV).

At the beginning of the presentation Mr. Kokarakis pointed out that the European Commission issued a legislative proposal to establish an EU system for monitoring, reporting and verifying (MRV) of CO2 emission from large ships using EU ports. Per him, ships would thereby be obliged to monitor four parameters on a voyage basis, namely fuel consumption, distance travelled, time spent at sea and cargo carried. The monitored parameters would need to be verified and different indicators based on these parameters would have to be reported on an annual basis.

All the parameters that have to be monitored according to the MRV proposal are in principle already being monitored on board ships, although some ship owners might have to adjust the frequency and/or the timing of the monitoring. The main additional obligations for ship owners will be that the monitored data will have to be verified and reported.

Additionally, he indicated that the proposed MRV Regulation would have to be laid down in the monitoring plan with the ships having the choice among the following four alternative methods: • Bunker delivery notes and periodic stocktakes of fuel tanks • Bunker fuel tank monitoring on board • Flow meters for applicable combustion processes • Direct Emissions measurements

Afterwards, Dr Kokarakis explained the verification procedure. Per him, the accredited verifiers have three key tasks: 1. To verify ship-specific monitoring plans 2. To verify that the annual ship-specific emission reports comply with the monitoring plans and 3. To verify that the figures contained in the annual ship-specific emission reports are accurate.

Therefore, he concluded that if the MRV regulation prompted to ship owners, either on a voluntary or on a mandatory basis, a significant CO2 emission reduction could be expected from the regulation.