Agenda Paper 6: Project Plan

The Senior Technical Manager informed the Board that the agenda paper comprised several staff recommendations. The first recommendation was about broadening the scope of the project so that other types of schemes and mechanisms to manage emissions would be included.

One Board member suggested changing the project name to ‘Pollutants Emissions Management Schemes’ in order to reflect the scope limitations of the project. Another Board member said that he understood the reasons for broadening the scope, however, he reminded the Board that there had been reasons for the previously limited scope, i.e. trading schemes were based on fair value and therefore accounting guidance could be easily developed. The Senior Technical Manager replied that governments used a mixture of different tools to manage emissions and staff had wanted to reflect this reality. One Board member expressed concerns that the scope might be too broad and could include schemes that mandate changes to property, plant and equipment to reduce emissions. The Senior Technical Manager said that property, plant and equipment would not be in the scope of the project. One Board member said that the investor perspective should be considered when scoping the project.

All Board members supported the staff recommendation.

The Senior Technical Manager then continued by suggesting that the Board took a ‘fresh start approach’ to the project, i.e. discard all tentative decisions that the Board had taken in previous versions of the project. She said that the tentative decisions had caused issues in the past and had led to the project being postponed. Staff also recommended identifying all the components of the project as a first step before considering the accounting for individual components.

One Board member expressed concerns about the agenda paper implying that only the net effects of the schemes would be considered and that this would not be consistent with the ‘fresh start approach’. A fellow Board member replied that to him the agenda paper did not decide on net or gross recognition. The Senior Technical Manager added that any perception of proposing net recognition was unintentional in the agenda paper.

All Board members supported the staff recommendation.