NAVIS: an app to untangle in the maze of the F-gas quota system

The Navis app F-Gas is also "brexit ready"

App to play, to choose the best place to have lunch, to know when the next tram passes or to create an itinerary, to make a transfer, for fitness. There is no modern industry that doesn’t have at least one app to easily perform more complex functions or to quickly find information. It was from this observation that the f-gas consulting company Navis started to develop its application for the purchase and management of F-gas quotas. But let’s go with order.

Navis entered the world of F-gas quota trade in 2018 as “New Entrant”. Like many other companies, it saw quota management and trade as an opportunity for growth and business. F-gas quotas, in fact – that is “simplifying” the right to market a certain amount of F-gas – are granted free of charge by the Commission but, once on the market, they acquire their value and – if sold – can turn into sound money. An investment, in short.

However, their management is far from simple. The use of quotas is described in Regulation F-gas 517/2014 which 1) is not necessarily written in easy and linear language and 2) does not enter into the analysis of individual cases, reasons why companies that – like Navis – are able to extricate themselves in the depths of the regulation and above all to untangle individual cases, today have quite a bit of work. An example: in the Regulation there is no mention that the Quota Authorization never expire and that Delegations are possible.

The potential for simplifying such a complex subject as quota management is considerable, and Navis has developed a tool to be able to do so: its Navis APP – available today in the Apple Store and for Android – leads the user in a guided way, simple and error-proof 1) to be able to get in touch with the right counterpart, whether it is a buyer or a seller of F-gas and 2) to understand which type F-gas Quota is needed to bring its products in market without being unintentionally illegal.

Are we exaggerating? No, because, as Navis explains: ‘This is a rather absurd situation that we have repeatedly encountered: many companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, have found themselves acting illegally without any intention of doing so but simply because, in trying to interpret the legislation, they have made a mistake’. But there is something else that should give the legislator food for thought: ‘We have repeatedly found a considerable unawareness of the need to comply with limits defined by the quotas in the movement of f-gases on the European market’.

In other words, there is still a great deal of ignorance about the quota system and its obligations. In other words, the ‘gospel’ of the F-gas Regulation has not spread as it should or as it was supposed to have done. It is therefore not only the technical training on F-gases that is needed in post-2021 Europe, but probably also a training or clarification of how quotas work and the obligations associated with them.

The Navis app connects users with the Navis broker who, once verified that the request is true and above all legal or that the applicant is able to obtain what he is looking for, puts in contact supply and demand in a much shorter time frame than that required on the Commission’s Gas F Portal.

Navis F-GAS App is to the knowledge of the authors – for now the only one of its kind available on the market, a service that we would actually have liked to see on the Commission’s F-gas portal, not signed by a private user.

You can meet Navis Consulting at Digital MCE these days.