AEA expertise helps the EEA to reveal the costs of industrial air pollution

AEA expertise has helped the European Environment Agency (EEA) to reveal the costs of industrial air pollution in a new report published today (November 24, 2011).

The report, Revealing the costs of air pollution from industrial facilities in Europe, assesses the costs to health and the environment caused by pollutants emitted from industrial facilities in Europe.

Using the latest information publicly available from the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR), the report provides valuable insights into the countries, sectors and individual facilities whose air pollution causes most harm in Europe. The cost in 2009 of damage caused by emissions from E-PRTR industrial facilities is estimated as at least €102–169 billion.

AEA is one of the partners of the EEA funded European Topic Centre on Air Pollution and Climate Change Mitigation (ETC/ACM) (http://acm.eionet.europa.eu/) and its work for the ETC/ACM contributed significantly to the data underpinning the EEA report.

In particular, the data in the EEA report is based on a new methodology developed by AEA, in partnership with EMRC (Ecometrics, Research, Consulting) and SERC (Spadaro Environmental Research Consultants).

“This methodology has, for the first time, provided a way of quantifying, in economic terms, the harm caused by emissions reported in the E-PRTR,” explains AEA Senior Consultant Anne Misra.

“In addition to estimating the costs from the ‘traditional’ regional air pollutants - for example nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, particulate matter, the new methodology helps provide estimates for the costs caused by emissions of heavy metals, organic micro-pollutants and carbon dioxide.”