COMPASS-EI–Manual – Chapter 1 Page 1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO COMPASS-EI
1.1 About COMPASS-EI
COMPASS-EI (“WinCeis”) is an emission inventory data management system. It is the
Emission Inventory module of the COMpliance ASsurance System – the COMPASS – which is
distributed by PDC Corp to manage a broad range of compliance data related to air quality. EI
utilizes the user’s current equipment and equipment configuration, and it enables users to prepare
emission inventory information, including emission rates, material usage, equipment parameters,
and operating schedules for reporting to the regulatory agency for a particular emission inventory
year. For Texas EI users, the system also enables the user to revise the data and send it back to
the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) electronically (subject to agency
approval of format and specifications). Paper forms are often required under the agency’s
reporting requirements, such as in New York, which does not accept electronic reports.
Users can insert as many scenarios of emission calculation methods and process data as they
wish in the COMPASS-Calcs module without affecting the data that will actually be seen by the
regulatory agency. Information entered in EI is, for the most part, intended to be seen by the
agency in order to meet a reporting requirement.
To retrieve EI data from industries, state agencies typically distribute an EI Questionnaire. This
manual familiarizes users with both the EI program and agency systems that interface directly
with EI data.
Emission Inventory data is considered proprietary information by many of the companies that
provide it. Data such as fuel usage and feed/product materials could offer competitors insight
into a user's production schedules as well as costs. Therefore, data security was an important
concern during the development of EI. Electronic reports to the agency are automatically
encrypted prior to sending the report, as further described in this manual.
1.2 Manual Procedures Affected by EI
Annual Emission Inventory (EI) Reporting – manual procedures used to report emissions,
process data, and equipment parameters, involves editing printouts provided by regulatory
agencies using a pen with red ink and completing paper forms that provide supplemental
information. These manual procedures have been replaced by data entry features in the EI
module, as well as by automated processes that fill in data through “global” selections by users,
and producing an electronic report in place of paper forms.
Updating Pollutants and Emission Rates in EI Reports – manual procedures used to insert the
pollutant types and emission rates into the annual EI report are laborious and prone to errors
because several thousand data points are involved. These procedures have been replaced by
using either: (a) an automated process for copying calculated emissions and pollutants from the
COMPASS-Calcs module into the annual report; or (b) a semi-automated process for uploading
emissions data from a tab-delimited file, using a PDC-supplied MS Excel file format to
aggregate the emissions data for importing into the annual report.
Calculating and Justifying Emission Fee Payments – manual procedures formerly used to
determine emission fees, required the application of complex logic on an equipment and
pollutant specific basis to establish the “actual” or “allowable” rate to provide the basis for
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