The Greek company EmiCert has become the first accredited verifier for the verification of embedded emissions under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The company has received certification from the Hellenic Accreditation System (ESYD) — the national body authorised to accredit verifiers.
The company announced this on Wednesday, 23 September.
EmiCert has been awarded certificate No. 874-9. This enables the company to verify emissions under the European cross-border verification scheme across all six sectors.
"This accreditation is the result of almost a year of dedicated technical and organisational work by our team. It enables EmiCert to apply its extensive experience in verifying industrial emissions to one of the European Union’s most important new climate policy instruments," said Kostas Antoniadis, Chief Executive of EmiCert.
An unreliable precedent
At the same time, industry experts have expressed doubts about the future effectiveness of such accreditation. Each of the sectors covered by SVAM is highly complex from a technological perspective. Verification requires a thorough understanding of all processes. Yet, in the case of EmiCert, it appears that a single company has a perfect grasp of the specifics of all processes – from steel to fertilisers.
In the future, such a decision by the Greek accreditation body could mark "the beginning of the collapse of the SVA as a reliable regulatory framework". This view was expressed by Jing Liu, founder of Jingzhe Environment & Climate.
"The issue is not merely whether the steel producer is cooperating. The question is whether the verifier understands the production processes and is able to verify the data provided by the plant. The CBAM affects the financial interests of factories, importers and traders. When a verification report is incorrect, the costs do not remain merely on paper," the expert emphasised.
As a reminder, the SVAM covers iron, steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen and electricity. It requires importers to pay for so-called embedded carbon emissions – the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the production of these goods.
On 15 September, the European Parliament announced that the scope of the Mechanism would be extended to cover derivative products — from wires to household goods.
Every year, importers are required to submit a CBAM declaration. The emissions figures included in the declaration may be based on default values or on actual figures. Only a company with the relevant accreditation can verify the actual figures. This accreditation can only be granted by national accreditation bodies in EU countries. These same bodies accredit verifiers from non-EU countries. Ukraine will be assisted by the Swedish body SWEDAC.
