The EU MRV regulation entered into force on 1 July 2015 as part of the European Commission (EC)’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from international shipping within the European Union (EU).

The EU MRV, short for monitoring, reporting and verification, is a requirement for ship owners and operators to annually monitor, report and verify CO2 emissions.

While data collection will begin on 1 January 2018, the preparation for compliance have commenced for many before that. Having a verified monitoring plan is the first milestone for this regulation. At WSM, we foresee the biggest challenge to remain compliant is ensuring data integrity throughout the data collection period.

Preparation work began in 2015 when the regulation entered into force. Our first move was to access the existing company procedures and conduct a gap analysis to meet EU MRV requirements.

Some major milestones that we have done to address the identified gaps are:

DATA INTEGRITY IS OUR FOCUS

It is our highest priority to ensure accuracy, enforceability and transparency in the verification process and making the EU MRV reporting (monitoring process) work as planned.

During submission of the emissions report, accredited verifiers will verify two main components:

1. Annual ship-specific emission report matches the monitoring plan
2. Accuracy of figures and calculation in annual reporting

To achieve the above, we identified two key contributors: 

Our MRV reporting process

Snippet of MRV Reporting from our business intelligence tool

Moving ahead

Moving ahead, regulators/verifiers may establish its own digital reporting platform that allows direct submissions of emissions report. We have evaluated the electronic version of the emissions report template and we are confident that our existing digital platform can meet the requirements.

Currently, we are implementing the requirements of IMO Data collection system (IMO DCS) into our systems. The data collection for IMO DCS will begin on 1 January 2019, but we are starting early like how a shaper of the maritime industry should be.

_{**At the point of this publication, WSM have completed drafting the monitoring plan and submitted the plan to class for verification.}