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Issues & Methodologies
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THE MONITORING, EVALUATION, REPORTING, AND VERIFICATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION PROJECTS: DISCUSSION OF ISSUES AND METHODOLOGIES AND REVIEW OF EXISTING PROTOCOLS AND GUIDELINES
by Edward Vine and Jayant Sathaye
[LBNL -40316, December 1997]
 All files listed in the Table of Contents are available for viewing or download in Adobe Acrobat 4.0 (pdf) format. If you prefer, the Full Report (462 kb pdf) is available, also in Acrobat format.
An online Abstract of the MERV report follows the Table of Contents.
Table of Contents
Upfront: Includes the cover page, abstract, full table of contents, list of tables, and acknowledgments.
Chapter1: Introduction — Provides the context and key objectives of this paper (includes examination of issues and methodologies involved in monitoring, evaluating, reporting, and verifying climate change mitigation projects). Explains the role of guidelines and protocols in an international carbon trading system.
Chapter 2: Existing Protocols and Guidelines — Reviews existing protocols and guidelines. In this report, protocols typically refer to project-specific methodologies and MERV requirements that need to be followed, while guidelines are more general and strict adherence to them is not expected.
Chapter 3: Generic MERV Issues — Presents key principles for the development of MERV guidelines and protocols. Discusses generic issues that MERV guidelines should address for energy-efficiency, renewable energy, and forestry projects (i.e., baselines, net impacts, precision of measurement, persistence of impacts, multiple reporting, verification of GHG reductions, uncertainty and risk, institutional issues, and the cost of MERV.
Chapter 4: MERV Issues and Methodologies for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Projects — Reviews different types of energy efficiency and renewable energy projects that will be subject to MERV guidelines. Discusses one of the key MERV issues (monitoring domain) that the guidelines need to address. Describes the use of alternative methodologies for data collection, monitoring, and evaluation.
Chapter 5: MERV Issues and Methodologies for Forestry Projects — Reviews different types of forestry projects that will be subject to MERV guidelines. Examines two MERV issues in particular (i.e., monitoring domain and socioeconomic impacts) and describes the following methodological issues:
measurement perspectives; methodologies for data collection, monitoring, and evaluation; inventory analysis of carbon pools; and, net carbon impacts.
Chapter 6: Summary and Conclusions (32k)
References (18k)
Appendices — The appendices are not contained in this report's electronic files, however, they are available at the following addresses or web sites (the following links
AbstractBecause of concerns with the growing threat of global climate change from increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, the United States and other countries are implementing, by themselves or in cooperation with one or more other nations (i.e., joint implementation), climate change mitigation projects. These projects will reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or sequester carbon, and will also result in non-GHG impacts (i.e., environmental, economic, and social impacts).
Monitoring, evaluating, reporting, and verifying (MERV) guidelines are needed for these projects in order to accurately determine their net GHG, and other, benefits. Implementation of MERV guidelines is also intended to: (1) increase the reliability of data for estimating GHG benefits; (2) provide real-time data so that mid-course corrections can be made; (3) introduce consistency and transparency across project types and reporters; and (4) enhance the credibility of the projects with stakeholders.
Any proposed MERV guidelines should reflect the following principles: they should be consistent, technically sound, readily verifiable, objective, simple, relevant, transparent, and cost-effective. In practice, tradeoffs will have to be made among some of these criteria: e.g., simplicity versus the technical soundness of a guideline, and high transaction costs and comprehensiveness.
In this paper, we review the issues and methodologies involved in MERV activities. In addition, we review protocols and guidelines that have been developed for MERV of GHG emissions in the energy and non-energy sectors by governments, nongovernmental organizations, and international agencies. We comment on their relevance and completeness, and identify several topics that future protocols and guidelines need to address, such as: (1) establishing a credible baseline; (2) accounting for impacts outside project boundaries through leakage; (3) net GHG reductions and other impacts; (4) precision of measurement; (5) MERV frequency; (6) persistence (sustainability) of savings, emissions reduction, and carbon sequestration; (7) reporting by multiple project participants; (8) verification of GHG reduction credits; (9) uncertainty and risk; (10) institutional capacity in conducting MERV; and (11) the cost of MERV.
Some of the MERV issues are of a generic nature, whose resolution would benefit all future MERV guidelines and protocols. These issues would best be addressed through an international consensus. The consensus should:
1. Clarify, at the earliest possible date, the accepted roles and responsibilities of national governments, private businesses, nongovernment organizations, and international organizations in the joint implementation accreditation process. Clearer property rights would reduce MERV costs, by focusing these activities on the correct parties at an earlier point in time.
2. Initiate a process to certify nongovernment organizations to provide MERV services.
3. Provide guidance on the determination of a baseline. How long should a baseline remain “ fixed” before a new baseline is developed? If new information becomes available after a project has been implemented, does the baseline have to remain fixed after implementation and as specified in a certification document, or can the baseline be adjusted?
4. Decide whether MERV guidelines could exclude certain types of projects that are most likely small in scale. Also, one could specify thresholds for an
accumulation of projects in the economy above which significant indirect impacts are to be expected (e.g., if 5-10% of electricity generated in a country is affected by a project).
5. Decide when a country’s laws and guidelines (e.g., environmental impact statements) apply; e.g., where an investor country funds a project in a host country, do the laws of the investor country apply? or the host country’s? or both? And what happens if the laws from the two countries conflict?
6. Create a tribunal to resolve disputes over verification results and develop a set of MERV guidelines.
The COP and national governments should foster information exchange for joint implementation in general, and for MERV issues discussed in this report.
In conclusion, there is a need to collect, analyze, summarize and disseminate the best responses to the topics addressed in this report and currently being dealt with in existing climate change mitigation projects. The experience gained in these projects should be very helpful for formulating MERV guidelines for climate change mitigation projects, which is the next phase in our project.
The Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting, and Verification of Climate Change Mitigaiton Projects: Discussion of Issues and Methodologies and Review of Existing Protocols and Guidelines report (LBNL-40316) was produced at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098.
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