Monitoring and reporting

The UK regulations require all installations carrying out any activity listed in Schedule 1 to hold a greenhouse gas emissions permit. The conditions of the permit require installations to monitor and report emissions in accordance with the monitoring plan approved by SEPA.

Installations must submit a monitoring plan (ETS2.2) with their permit application (ETS1). The plan is required to provide information on how emissions will be measured and reported, and will require approval from SEPA. If top tier requirements are not already met, then installations must submit an improvement plan to SEPA by 30 June each year. You can download the monitoring plan template and improvements template from the Forms page.

The monitoring and reporting plan has been laid out in accordance with the guidelines set by the European Commission (Commission Decision 2007/589/EC, establishing guidelines for the monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions).

The reporting year runs from 1 January to 31 December each year. At the end of each year, installations must prepare an annual emissions report, which must then be verified. Go to the Forms page to download the template for reporting annual emissions.

The EU ETS requires all annual emissions reports and monitoring to be verified by an independent accredited verifier. A verifier will check for inconsistencies in monitoring with the approved plan and errors/mis-statements in the emissions report. They will produce a verification opinion statement, which must then be sent with the now verified annual emissions report to SEPA by 31 March the following year.

Note: Verifiers are private companies who will levy charges on operators for their services. Verifiers will also confirm an installations verified annual emissions figure in the registry directly.

EU ETS Monitoring Guidelines 2007

Decision to establishing guidelines for the monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions pursuant to Directive 2003/87/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, can be found using the following link: