No. 3, October 2002

Cover illustration © Lars-Erik Håkansson (Lehån)

Main articles in brief

EU vs Kyoto: Low costs of energy a trouble
If present trends continue, by 2010 their emissions of greenhouse gases in the EU will still be as great as they were in 1990, according to the first report on energy and environment of EEA, the European Environment Agency.

Here's the real key (Editorial)
Falling energy prices are a strong reason for the use of energy continuing to increase in the EU. Current energy prices by no means reflect the true costs of energy use to society, since they do not take full account of its consequences for health and the environment.

Russia: Driving a hard bargain
Russia, whose signature is needed for the Kyoto protocol to come into force, is doing all it can to obtain the best terms for itself.

Oslo protocol: Ceilings more than met
All the countries that ratified the Oslo protocol, aiming at reducing European emissions of sulphur, have kept within their ceilings – and most of them with a comfortable margin.

Shipping: Increasing emissions
If nothing is done, by 2010 emissions from ships are likely to reach more than three-quarters of the EU total for SO2 from land-based sources, and about two-thirds of that for NOx.

In the NGO perspective
Although the directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control represents an impressive advance, problems appear likely to remain as regards its practical application.

Forest damage: Still about the same
The proportion of European trees showing more than 25-per-cent leaf or needle loss amounted to slightly more than 22 per cent at the latest count in 2001.

Critical loads: Worse than thought
New figures show acidification and eutrophication to be much greater in the Swedish ecosystems than has appeared from earlier estimates.

European emissions: Greatly differing trends
With some flagrant exceptions, European emission reductions have on the whole been remarkable during the 1990’s.

USA: Not so clear skies
The Bush proposal gives higher pollution exposures, threatens local air quality, and prevents timely action to address the risks of global warming, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council in the US.

Delay for two years
"People will be five times as rich in a hundred years’ time. And if we are willing to postpone that prosperity by just two years, we could fix global warming into the bargain," say two experts.

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EDITORIAL

Here's the real key

Energy use is far and away the main reason for our air being polluted. According to EEA,1 energy use is responsible for almost all the nitrogen oxides emitted in the EU, as well as for more than 90 per cent of the sulphur dioxide, about 85 per cent of the particles, and half or so of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Moreover a good four-fifth of the emissions of greenhouse gases are attributable to the use of energy.

In the EU, as in industrialized countries generally, efforts to improve air quality have been mainly directed to achieving short-term goals, in other words by setting emission standards. That, says the EEA, was what has brought about more than half of the reductions of the emissions of SO2 and NOx from the power sector during the last ten years. Most of the rest has been due to changes in the kind of fossil fuel that has been used - primarily with a switch from coal to gas - which has accounted for 20-25 per cent of the reductions, an improvement of efficiency in the generation of electricity from fossil fuels (about 10 per cent) and an increase in the share of nuclear and renewables (also some 10 per cent).

To the extent that the emissions especially of SO2 and NOx have gone down so notably in the EU during the last ten years, it can be claimed that the strategy has so far been successful. But there will still be a long way to go before the reductions can be achieved that are necessary for a final solution of the air pollution problem.

It is not only that the requirements so far agreed upon have been insufficient, but that the use of energy is still continuing to rise, and all forecasts point to its going on doing so. And mostly in the transportation sector.

A strategy aimed at reducing the emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases in the long run must therefore be primarily concerned with cutting down on the use of energy, because that would lead to a permanent lessening of the load on the environment. It must also be ensured that the energy that still has to be used will as far as possible come from renewable sources.

During the transition period required for these changes, and in view of the extent of the damage to the environment from air pollution, so-called technical measures for reducing it will have to be applied to the fullest extent possible. These would include flue-gas desulphurization and denitrification in the case of large combustion plants, as well as improved fuels, catalytic exhaust cleaning, and particle filtering for road vehicles.

The advantages of tough emission requirements are on the one hand that they will quickly bring about a lessening of the effects on the environment, and on the other give a more correct picture of the price differences between energy from "cleaner" renewable sources and that from "dirty" non-renewable ones.

Falling energy prices are a strong reason for the use of energy continuing to increase in the EU. Current energy prices by no means reflect the true costs of energy use to society, since they do not take full account of its consequences for health and the environment. It will therefore be essential, if an energy system is to be attained that will be sustainable in the long run, to internalize these costs, which can be brought about in various ways, such as by emissions-related taxes and/or charges. Also needed will be clear, politically binding stages for phasing out non-renewable energy sources (nuclear as well as fossil fuels) and phasing in renewables.

All this is in line with officially declared EU policy. It just calls for practical application.

Christer Ågren

¹ European Environment Agency. Energy and environment in the European Union (2002). Environmental issue report No 31, available at www.eea.eu.int.

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KYOTO TARGETS

Low costs of energy a trouble

Although the European Union had managed to stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide, according to commitment, at 1990 levels by the year 2000, and had reduced its emissions of greenhouse gases by 3.5 per cent between 1990 and 1999, it will nevertheless be hard put to meet its commitment under the Kyoto protocol requiring a reduction of 8 per cent by 2010 if the member countries fail to curb increases in the use of energy. If nothing is done in that respect, and present trends continue, by 2010 their emissions of greenhouse gases will still be as great as they were in 1990, according to the first report on energy and environment of EEA, the European Environment Agency.¹

The report shows developments in the member countries during the decade from 1990 to 1999, making clear that most of them have made insufficient efforts to meet Kyoto requirements. If the trends of the nineties should continue, only six of the EU member countries will be meeting their commitments: Finland, France, Germany, Sweden, Luxembourg, and the UK. See chart 1.

Chart 1. Change in total and energy-related greenhouse gas emissions 1990-1999 and Kyoto Protocol targets for 2010

.

The EEA notes that the releases of greenhouse gases related to energy declined considerably less than those from other sources during the nineties. The reduction that did occur derived mainly from measures taken in the industry and power sectors - such as the considerable efforts of a one-time character made in Germany and the UK; examples being the post-unification restructuring of German industry and the switch from coal to gas in UK power generation. The effects have however been largely offset by the increases in emissions from the transportation sector.

Any continued fall in emissions of greenhouse gases will require cuts in the use of energy, and the EEA report reveals that the EU members had hardly made any moves at all in that direction in the nineties. On the contrary, energy use increased by 1.1 per cent per annum, led by transportation, whose share of the total use rose from 29.4 to 32 per cent (chart 2), and according to EEA's forecasts it will continue to rise, although at a lesser rate by 2010 as a result of improvements in fuel efficiency.

Chart 2. Change in energy-related greenhouse  gas emissions by economic sector, 1990-99
.

Although some progress had been made in the nineties as regards energy efficiency, it was insufficient to have any real effect on the use of energy. Final energy intensity (final energy use per unit of GDP) did indeed drop by an average of 0.9 per cent per annum, but as average GDP growth was higher than that (2.1 per cent per annum), the overall outcome was still an increase in energy use.

Apart from industry, no EU economic sector has decoupled economic growth from energy use sufficiently to stop growth in its use of energy. A general increase in energy intensity in EU was only prevented by the substantial reduction of energy use in Germany, and by improvement in energy efficiency. On the other hand, as can be seen from chart 3, energy intensity increased between 1990 and 1999 in five of the member countries. The EEA ascribes the slow overall decrease to the low priority given to the necessary policies, together with abundant energy supplies and low prices for fossil fuels.

Chart 3. Annual change in final energy intensity, 1990-1999.

As regards energy supplies, the EEA notes that while fossil fuels remain on the whole predominant, coal and lignite have to some extent been supplanted by natural gas. Renewable energy's share of total energy use had grown only slightly, from 5.0 to about 5.7 per cent, between 1990 and 1999. At such a slow rate of replacement, there will be no possibility whatsoever of the EU attaining its indicative target of 12 per cent for renewable energy by 2010.

Low prices for energy are singled out as an important reason for the EU countries' failure to check the use of energy. Although energy taxes have been raised, prices on all types of energy - except diesel fuel for road vehicles and lead-free petrol - have fallen since the end of 1980, and in most cases heavily, falling for instance by 35 per cent for oil for domestic heating, and 48 and 54 per cent for electricity and heavy oil in industrial use (1985 to 2001, reckoned in fixed prices).

A main reason, besides falling world market prices for fossil fuels, has been the deregulation of energy markets. As the EEA puts it: "In the absence of appropriate policies to internalize the external costs of energy and improve energy demand management, reduced prices are likely to act as a disincentive to energy saving and may encourage energy consumption."

Roger Olsson

¹ Energy and environment in the European Union. Environmental issue report No 31. European Environment Agency 2002. Available at http://reports.eea.eu.int/environmental_ issue_report_2002_31/en.

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EU IPPC DIRECTIVE

In the NGO perspective

Although the directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control represents an impressive advance, problems appear likely to remain as regards its practical application in some respects.

The directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC)¹ is the key instrument of EU industrial policy relating to the environment. Its fundamental strength is that it moves away from narrow end-of-pipe policies towards a broader integrated and preventative approach. It includes wider issues, such as energy efficiency and the minimization of waste; it looks beyond the technological hardware to include management and organizational issues; and it considers cross-media effects, ranging from local to global.

There is also a potential strength in the directive's provisions (Article 15) that provide the public with the opportunity to influence permitting procedures. But how will this theoretical opportunity be converted into a practical reality? People can only take part in the permitting process if they can understand the issues involved, and practical experience shows that this can be a major problem.

Their main guide in determining what goes on at any particular local installation is the relevant Reference Documents on Best Available Techniques (the BREFs). Yet these are being produced by technical specialists to a standard that is said at times to be too complicated even for industry to deal with. The European Environmental Bureau has therefore suggested that those sections intended to provide background information for the public should be evaluated by non-specialists, within a context where there is no such thing as a stupid question.

The IPPC technical working groups are made up of representatives of each member state, of industry and of environmental NGOs, a composition theoretically intended to provide a comprehensive range of expertise. In practice, however, there are enormous discrepancies in resources between these different parties. Ultimately, such an imbalance undermines the apparent range of expertise being drawn upon in these groups.

There are also problems with the practical application of BAT within member states. Although Article 18 allows for the setting of an EU-wide standard, in practice emission limit values are effectively being re-nationalised, and are most likely to be set at the local level. Here, the directive allows for account to be taken of "local environmental conditions," and it is this balance between emission limit values and environmental quality standards that may be problematic.

On the one hand, the ability to take account of local environmental conditions could be interpreted as a "filling up" clause, giving the right to pollute up to a given environmental quality standard. On the other hand, this is clearly not the intention of IPPC, or it would not bother with the setting of BAT standards. This uneasy compromise between the two approaches allows for differing levels of strictness in the application of BAT between member states, and as a result, of competition between regulatory systems. This risks unabated plants undermining cleaner abated ones in the market place. This risk should be limited by amending the IPPC Directive to require the BREFs to set legally enforceable minimum emission limit values.

And then there's the future. The BREFs allow for this by having sections for emerging techniques. Here techniques that are promising, but not yet fully available, can be documented, and when any significant change occurs, the BREFs can be updated. But sometimes developments occur that go beyond a simple updating - developments that have important implications for other EU policies.

One such example is where traditional LCP technologies are being developed in hybrid formulation with fuel cells. These are most advanced for combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs), which show significant potential advances for energy efficiency and pollution abatement. Obviously, these are important developments, but they pose a problem for the BREFs as currently organized.

On the one hand, the nature of those developments means that they are no longer combustion processes. They therefore do not qualify for inclusion in the BREF for large combustion plants.

But on the other hand, this transformation of traditional CCGTs into hybrids is particularly important for informing EU assessments of the Union's ability to meet its Kyoto obligations. Already CCGTs have been identified as the key to EU compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. A recent Commission study assumed a new plant efficiency of 60 per cent by 2020. However, this is virtually being achieved now with traditional CCGTs, whereas the hybrids offer the prospect of 70-per-cent efficiencies by 2010 and 80 per cent by 2015. A comprehensive overview of this cross-sectoral development is therefore very important.

With sufficient flexibility, there should be no problem in adapting the BREFs to accommodate whatever developments the future brings, however challenging they are to our current technological perspectives. But this specific example serves as a reminder that whilst the initial writing of the BREFs is an achievement in itself, in terms of achieving the full potential of IPPC, it's only a beginning.

Then finally, when considering the future, the framework of IPPC needs to be extended vertically, because as currently formulated, it presents only a partial view of BAT. There is some vertical differentiation within the IPPC, in that the prevention of pollution is prioritized over its control.

But the very Best Available Technique for preventing and controlling industrial pollution is not to use the product in the first place. Unfortunately, that option is not fully available because it involves demand-side management, and IPPC focuses simply on supply. Moreover, the IPPC process is not considering whether there is an alternative, better way of meeting demand, such as the use of renewable rather than fossil fuel sources of energy. This means that some of the very best - and cheapest - options available to prevent and control pollution are excluded from IPPC deliberations.

Consequently, these wider dimensions need to be integrated with current IPPC provisions into a hierarchy that can act as a guide to prioritizing action. The rationale of such hierarchies is that the full potential at each level should be developed before moving to the next one, and in descending order of priority an environmentalist's hierarchy would be:

1. reduction in demand;

2. the use of more environmentally friendly alternatives;

3. the prevention of pollution; and,

4. the control of pollution.

And the underlying principles of such a hierarchy would be better served by a move away from expressing emission limit values as milligrams of pollutant per cubic metre of air. Instead, limits should be set in terms of emissions in relation to useful output, a system of measurement that would reflect the efficient use of resources and, consequently, the prevention of pollution, the primary objective of IPPC.

The integration of measures on this scale would be a complex and challenging task, but the IPPC Directive has already taken a bold step forward in introducing its integrated and preventative elements. By progressing this to embrace not only potentially exciting technical developments, but also demand-side management, then the IPPC would get much closer to a system of industrial management that really does integrate the prevention and control of pollution.

Lesley James

The author is the Acid Rain Campaigner for Friends of the Earth (England, Wales and N.Ireland), and designated expert for the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) in the IPPC Technical Working Group on large combustion plants.

¹ The EU directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) was adopted in 1996. It uses the concept of Best Available Techniques (BATs) to establish benchmark emission limit values for a range of pollutants, although these are not legally binding upon member states, which are free to take account of local conditions. The benchmark standards are set in an information exchange process that is organized around a number of Technical Working groups (TWGs), which each produces a BAT Reference Document (BREF) as a guide to permit writers.

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EU in brief

Increased emissions of carbon dioxide

Emissions of carbon dioxide in the European Union rose in 2001 by three-quarters of one per cent, according to a new report from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), which says combustion CO₂ emissions rose in 2001 in ten of the fifteen EU member states and fell in only four.

Countries with increasing emission percentages were: Ireland +5.7, Finland +3, Sweden +2.7, Netherlands +2.4, Portugal +2.1, Germany +1.6, UK +1.5, Spain +0.8, Denmark +0.6, and Austria +0.2.Italy managed to remain even with the previous year while Belgium led reductions with -4.7 per cent, followed by Luxembourg with -4.4 per cent, France with -1.6, and Greece with -0.1 per cent.

Findings of the DIW report are based on statistics from the oil firm BP's energy review for 2002.Total EU emissions of CO₂ were 0.5 per cent lower in 2000 than they had been in 1990, according to the latest inventory from the European Environment Agency.

Source: ENS (ens-news.com), August 22, 2002.

EU directive on emissions trading

At the beginning of September, the European Parliament's environment committee adopted its first-reading position on the proposed EU directive on emissions trading for the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

According to the Commission's proposals (see AN 4/01) the scheme would begin in 2005 with a three-year trial period, and proper trading would start in 2008. The environment committee agreed on several amendments, e.g. that more industry sectors, such as the chemical and aluminium, should be required to participate, and that emissions of the five other greenhouse gases covered by the Kyoto protocol should be included already from the outset.

The environment committee's proposed amendments are to be discussed and voted in plenum by the end of September, and the Council of Ministers is expected to take them up with the aim of reaching a common position in mid-October.

Further information: http://www.europarl.eu.int/committees/envi_home.htm

Less CO₂ from cars

The average emissions of carbon dioxide from new cars sold within the EU by European auto makers continue to drop, the figure for 2001 having been 164 g/km as compared with 169 the year before and 185 g/km in 1995. These figures are from the annual report of the carmakers' trade association ACEA to the EU Commission.

This positive trend is said to be due to a continuous introduction of new technologies, the progressive introduction of diesel cars on the market and to ongoing progress in fuel efficiency.According to an agreement between the Commission and the carmakers, the average for new cars sold within the EU is to be 140 g/km in 2008.

Sulphur-free fuels likely to come

The EU will in all likelihood be requiring petrol and diesel fuels to be sulphur free as from 2009. By "sulphur free" is meant fuel with a maximum sulphur content of 10 ppm (parts per million). The Council of Ministers and the European Parliament were in agreement in all important respects on this matter, except as to whether the requirement to use sulphur-free fuel should also apply to non-road vehicles.

At the second reading of the directive in late September the Parliament continued to insist that it should. The Council will now tackle the issue a second time. The difference will probably be resolved in a conciliation process.

More biofuels urged

The EU Parliament is supporting a proposal from the Commission that motor fuel from biomass should constitute at least 5.75 per cent of all the fuel used in 2010 (see AN 1/02).

The only member countries that were in favour of making this compulsory, when the matter came up before the Council of Ministers on June 10, were Austria, Spain, and Italy. While accepting the proposal in principle, all the others wanted it to be indicative rather than mandatory. Environmentalist organizations were also cool towards it. "This has been motivated by agricultural support rather than environmental outcome, and we're pleased that's been appreciated by ministers," commented Frazer Goodwin of the European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E).

The other part of the proposal, to use tax relief as a means of increasing the use of biofuels, met with a warmer reception, both from parliament and the ministers. The Council is expected to adopt a common position on it during the autumn.

Sources: ENS, June 10, 2002. Environment Daily, July 5, 2002.

Ten-year strategy

After having been approved both by the European Parliament (in May) and the Council of Ministers (in June), the EU's sixth environmental action program was published in the Official Journal in September. It sets forth EU strategy for attacking environmental problems during the next ten years from June 2002.

In the matter of air quality it asserts that the essential aim will be to achieve levels of air quality that "do not give rise to significant negative impacts on and risks to human health and the environment."

A prominent step will be for the EU Commission to develop a "thematic strategy to strengthen a coherent and integrated policy on air pollution to cover priorities for further actions, the review and updating where appropriate of air quality standards and national emission ceilings," with a view to reaching the long-term objective of no exceeding of critical loads and levels, and the development of better systems for gathering information, modelling and forecasting.

The thematic strategies of the program should be presented within three years, i.e. at the latest by summer 2005.The final text is available at: http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/

Motorbike emissions law takes effect

A new EU directive cutting maximum emission levels from two and three-wheeled motorcycles became law on September 20, with its publication in the official journal (L252/20). Political agreement on the rules was reached already in March (AN 2/02, p.8).Directive 2002/51/EC. Official Journal L 252 , 20/09/2002 P. 0020 - 0032. The final text is available at: http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/

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KYOTO PROTOCOL

Driving a hard bargain

Russia, whose signature is still needed, continues to strive for better terms.

Hope that the Kyoto protocol would come into force in time for the summit meeting in Johannesburg finally came to nothing, and a month afterwards one important signature is still missing - Russia's. Whether the delay is due to sluggishness in the Russian political procedure, or whether Russia is merely manoeuvring to get a better deal, is unclear.

The deputy chairman of the Environmental Committee of the Russian Parliament (Duma), Alexander Kosarikov, has said that Russia is an environmental donor and wants to get paid for it, according to Ilya Popov of the Russian environmentalist organization Socio-Ecological Union. He says Mr Kosarikov has let it be known that unless there is some promise of compensation, many of the Duma members will refuse to vote for ratification.

There are two conditions to be fulfilled before this protocol for curbing emissions of greenhouse gases can come into effect. It must on the one hand have been ratified by at least 55 nations, and on the other the Annex 1 states (industrialized countries) must together answer for 55 per cent of the emissions of carbon dioxide as reported to the climate convention for the year 1990.

While the first has been met with ease - 89 countries having ratified by early September - the second condition is causing trouble, since those industrialized countries that have ratified only account for 40 per cent of the Annex 1 emissions of CO₂ in 1990 - the United States, which alone is responsible for 36 per cent, having stepped out of the proceedings. The fate of the protocol therefore hangs wholly on Russia, whose share in 1990 was 17.4 per cent. If only Russia ratifies, the 55 per cent requirement will be met, and it can come into force. Without Russia, that will be impossible.

Russia has not been slow to exploit its key position, taking a stiffer attitude already at the climate meeting in Bonn last summer. It then got its demand accepted to be credited with 17 million tons of CO₂ for the carbon sink of its forests. Already a whopping increase. But then at Marrakech about half a year later it again came with far-reaching demands. By threatening not to ratify the protocol at that stage of the proceedings it managed to get its credit for carbon sinks almost doubled - from 17 to 33 million tons.

Because its emissions of greenhouse gases had fallen off greatly since 1990 as a result of the decline in the economy, Russia's stock of emission permits was already enormous, and success in squeezing out further advantage for itself in international negotiation had so much improved its situation in this respect that Russia was now counting on being able to sell emission permits for billions of dollars. This last year however it has been questioned whether it will be possible to sell permits profitably, since the largest potential buyer - the United States - has opted out of the Kyoto proceedings.

It was reported last March in the Japanese newspaper Yomiuyri Shimbun that Russia had proposed that Japan and the EU should guarantee to purchase permits - which according to a high-ranking Russian government official would be the condition for Russia to ratify the protocol. During his visit to Germany in April, President Putin promised however to do so without mentioning any conditions, and the Russian government did in fact make a decision to set going the ratification procedure.

During the Johannesburg meeting the Russian deputy minister in the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, Mukhamed Tsikanov, had reverted to the matter of the weakening market for emission permits, saying that the economic motives for Russia to ratify the protocol were poor, and that there was a risk of Russia also backing out. A couple of days later he denied however having said anything of the sort, and again assuring that Russia had every intention of ratifying, despite the fact that "US non-participation establishes difficulties."

But according to Kosarikov the Duma has still had no proposal from the government, after waiting for well over three months.

Roger Olsson

For the latest news about the ratification process, see: www.climatenetwork.org

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CALIFORNIA

Standards for CO₂ emissions from cars

California's air quality board is to develop statewide standards for tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide that are to come into play in 2009. The standards will apply to carmakers' fleet averages, rather than to each individual vehicle, and the makers will be able to partially achieve the standards by reducing pollution from non-vehicle sources, including their factories.

The proposal for a new law met with a strong counter-attack from the whole American auto industry, and in the event it was only passed by one vote in the California Assembly on July 2. It was signed by governor Gray Davis on the 22nd of that month."Opponents of this bill say the sky is falling," Davis explained. "But they said it about unleaded gasoline. They said it about catalytic converters. They said it about seat belts and air bags. But the sky is not falling. It's just getting a whole lot cleaner."

Because California set its own limits on air pollution before the enactment of the federal Clean Air Act, the state is the only one in the US to be allowed to set pollution rules overriding the federal law. California has the strictest air-quality standards in the nation, and requires cleaner fuel than any other state.

Under a special provision of the Clean Air Act, any state is free to adopt California's strict emissions standards in place of weaker federal rules, and a number of states, including New York, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont, have so far followed in California's footsteps. These states, representing some of the nation's largest automobile markets, could force the auto industry to make nationwide changes in tailpipe emissions standards.

Source: ENS (ens-news.com), July 22, 2002.

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CLIMATE

Two years to save the world

“People will be five times as rich in a hundred years’ time. And if we are willing to postpone that prosperity by just two years, we could fix global warming into the bargain. That’s the startling conclusion of leading US climate economist Stephen Schneider and Swedish energy economist Christian Azar, who are publishing1 a bruising assault on the Bush administration’s claim that international plans to curb climate change would cripple the US and world economies.”

So reports Fred Pearce in a recent issue of New Scientist.

Said Schneider: “The wild rhetoric about enslaving the poor and bankrupting the economy to do climate policy is fallacious, even if one accepts conventional economic models,” adding that economic arguments need to be put in context, and calling on climate scientists to take a tougher stand against the doom-mongers who say that action would be too costly.

The Bush administration has now been joined by the Australian, apparently also influenced by the arguments of environmental economists such as Yale’s William Nordhaus, who maintains that “a vague premonition of some potential disaster is insufficient grounds to plunge the world into depression.”

But said Schneider, according to Pearce, over a century even the trillions (US) of dollars thought necessary to halt global warming would be a blip compared with the economic advances predicted by the same experts.

Last year’s report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change included the economists’ assessment that stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide at twice pre-industrial concentrations by 2100 would cost between $1 and $8 trillion (million million). It sounds a lot, commented Schneider, but the money would be all but invisible against the predicted 2 per cent a year in economic growth.

Without action to halt global warming, economists predict that the world as a whole will be ten times as rich by 2100 as it is today, and that people on an average will be five times as well off. Adding on the costs of tackling warming, says Schneider, would postpone this development by a mere two years.

Meeting the terms of the Kyoto Protocol would mean industrialized countries getting 20 per cent richer by June 2010 rather than by January of that year.

1 Are the economic costs of stabilising the atmosphere prohibitive? Christian Azar and Stephen H. Schneider. Ecological Economics, Vol. 42 (1-2) (2002) pp. 73 -80.

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SHIPPING

Emission trends analyzed

Large already, emissions of SO₂ and NOx may increase by a third if nothing is done.

Ships plying in European waters in 2000 let out 3.6 million tons of nitrogen oxides and 2.6 million tons of sulphur dioxide. If nothing is done, emissions will rise by 10 to 30 per cent during the next ten years, which would mean that by 2010 ships' emissions would be equivalent to more than three-quarters of the EU total for SO₂ from land-based sources, and about two-thirds of that total for NOx. See charts below.

The above figures come from a study¹ made for the EU Commission by Entec consultants that has just been published. It covers all the waters surrounding Europe: the Baltic, the North Sea (including the English Channel), the northeastern Atlantic, and the Mediterranean.

This is the first time that ships' emissions of air pollutants have been estimated for Europe for the year 2000. Previous to it the latest was for 1990. But although both traffic intensity and the consumption of heavy bunker fuel oil (HFO) have been increasing in Europe by 2 to 3 per cent annually during the nineties, the Entec figures for 2000 are lower for SO₂ and NOx than those in any of the studies made for 1990.

Although Entec has made no serious attempt to explain this discrepancy, the fact that in its own study it assumed a lower sulphur content for HFO (2.7 instead of 3.0 per cent), as well as revised emission factors for NOx, may have contributed to the difference. On the other hand the Entec study includes fishing vessels and emissions from ships in port areas, which previous inventories had not done. But that surely should have led to a higher emission total. Estimates for 1990, made by Lloyd's Register, showed figures for SO₂ and NOx that were 40 per cent higher than Entec's for that year.

Fishing vessels are responsible for very little - no more than 2 per cent of the total of pollutant emissions from ships - while ferries answer for 11-12 per cent. The remaining 86 or so per cent comes mainly from cargo vessels. It further appears from Entec's figures that about 95 per cent of all emissions take place at sea, and 5 per cent while ships are in port or near some port.

Some 40 per cent of all the estimated maritime releases of air pollutants occurs from ships moving between ports in the EU. About an equal amount comes from ships either leaving or heading for EU ports, and 12 per cent from ships travelling either to or from ports in EU candidate countries. The rest, about 7 per cent, is from ships passing through European waters but not entering either EU or candidate countries' ports.

Some other consultants, Beicip-Franlab,² who have studied the availability and prices of low-sulphur marine fuels, found that the price of HFO in Europe during the last few years had averaged US$100 per ton, while prices for high sulphur (2 per cent S) and low-sulphur (less than 0.2 per cent S) distillate fuels had lain at $150 and $186 per ton.

In 2000 the demand for marine fuels (for use in international trade) reached 42 million tons in the EU, with HFO accounting for 34 million tons and distillate fuels (marine diesel oil and marine gas oil) for 8.2 million. Over and above this was a demand for 1.2 million tons of HFO and 4.6 million tons of marine distillates for use in inland and coastal waters.

Beicip-Franlab has concluded that the European refineries will have to invest in additional desulphurizing capacity if the estimated in-port consumption of 8.4 million tons of marine gas oil fulfilling the requirement of max. 0.2 per cent sulphur is to be met. The premiums for producing the lower-sulphur fuel were estimated to be $12-19 per ton for 0.2-per-cent fuel and $14-21 for 0.1 per cent.

As regards heavy bunker fuels, the price differential between low-sulphur HFO (with less than 1 per cent sulphur) and high-sulphur HFO (3.5 per cent S) averaged around $19 per ton over the last ten years. According to Beicip-Franlab, reblending of existing fuels could make available in the EU some 4.7 million tons of HFO with less than 1.5 per cent sulphur content, at an expected premium of $12-14 per ton.

To supply larger amounts of low-sulphur HFO (than the 4.7 million tons that could be met by reblending) would demand new investment in refineries for the conversion and desulphurization of residual oil - resulting in a price differential for low-sulphur HFO of 50-90 euros per ton.

Assuming various limits to the permitted sulphur content of HFO and MGO (marine gas oils) Entec has examined a number of scenarios for sulphur emissions up to 2010 - also taking two different assumptions as to increased traffic, with annual growths of 1.5 and 3.0 per cent. As can be seen from the table, even under the most stringent of the scenarios (no. 9), the emissions of sulphur would only have come down by something between 13 and 22 per cent by 2008, from their level in 2000.

According to scenario 8, emissions would remain largely unchanged if sea-borne traffic increases under the high-growth (3 per cent) assumption. With low growth they are estimated to fall by 10 per cent between 2000 and 2008. It may be worth noting that the outcome of this scenario corresponds by and large with commitments already undertaken in principle through the Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECAs) for the Baltic and North Seas by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 1997, although slow ratification has so far prevented these from coming into force. There is also considerable correspondence with the requirements for the sulphur content of marine gas oils contained in the EU directive 1999/30/EC.

Christer Ågren

¹ Quantification of emissions from ships associated with ship movements between ports in the European Community (July 2002). Entec UK Ltd. ² Advice on the costs to fuel producers and price premia likely to result from a reduction in the level of sulphur in marine fuels marketed in the EU (April 2002). Beicip-Franlab.Both reports are available at the EU Commission environment directorate's website: http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/air/background.htm

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Shipping in brief

Set to tackle air pollution from ports

The Californian South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) has announced $8 million in new funding to reduce air pollution from the largest single source in the region - the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex.

Smog-forming, toxic emissions from cargo ships and vessels generally, heavy-duty trucks, trains, and other equipment are a threat to the health of all of the region's 15 million inhabitants. Toxic emissions from the diesel engines of ships, trucks, etc., are believed to be the primary cause of communities near the port having some of the highest cancer risks in the region on account of air pollution. The fuel burnt by ships is among the dirtiest in the world, containing up to 20,000 parts per million of sulphur - 40 times more than allowed in diesel fuel for trucks and other equipment in California.

Together the vessels in the port area emit more than 47 tons per day of smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx), or more than a fifth of the amount emitted by all the cars in the region. Emissions from the port just about equal the total of NOx emitted from the worst 300 industrial facilities in the region, which would include all the power plants and refineries.

Growth in ship traffic during the next 20 years is expected to lead to an increase of about 70 per cent in NOx emissions. Since 1998, AQMD and state funds have provided more than $25 million to help replace ageing, dirty diesel engines in sea-going vessels and port equipment with new, cleaner types, thereby reducing smog-forming emissions by something like 80 per cent.

Source: ENS (ens-news.com), August 28, 2002.

Also contributing to PM levels

Between 20 and 30 per cent of the concentrations of secondary particles (sulphates and nitrates) in the air in the European coastal area may be attributable to emissions of SO₂ and NOx from ships engaged in international trade in these areas, according to calculations made with the use of the EMEP model.¹

Estimates of the effect of ships' contribution to concentrations of PM10 show the spread to vary from country to country. They are calculated to account for 5 to 10 per cent of the total in large parts of the UK, Portugal, and Italy, for 10-20 per cent in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and more than 20 per cent in remote areas of these last.

It is emphasized that the figures represent only a first rough estimate which will need further validation.

¹ The influence of ship traffic emissions on the air concentrations of particulate matter (2001). Study for the European Commission by EMEP. Available at the EU Commission environment directorate's website: http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/air/background.htm

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FOREST DAMAGE

Still about the same

Report includes country-by-country data as well as that for the all-European survey.

The proportion of European trees showing more than 25-per-cent leaf or needle loss amounted to slightly more than 22 per cent at the latest count in 2001. Regional variations were nevertheless considerable, and a slight but steady deterioration was noted in the case of trees that had been under observation during a lengthy period.

Thirty countries had participated in the count, and the report¹ gives data for almost 6000 sample plots spread over a grid with 16x16km squares covering the entire continent. Some 132,000 trees were included in the assessment of defoliation - which depends on many stress factors and is therefore considered a valuable measure for describing the overall condition of the forests.

It is when defoliation exceeds 25 per cent that a tree is regarded as damaged, and in 2001 an average of 22.4 per cent were so classified. That is just about the same as in the last few years. The most damaged among common European species were European and sessile oak (Quercus robur and Q. petraea).

From constant observation since 1989 of a number of common sample trees it appeared that there had been an increase in the mean defoliation of all the main species. The highest proportion of damaged trees so far recorded was in 1995, follwed by a slight decrease in the next two years, after which there has been a slow but steady increase in damage.

The report includes country-by-country data as well as that for the all-European survey. The country data are given in the table opposite.Since defoliation can be due to a variety of stress factors, a number of explanations can be given for the trends that have been noted in many cases.

The fact that the forests are now in better shape in southern Poland, for instance, is said by local experts to be an a result of a decrease in the load of air pollutants in combination with favourable weather. Unfavourable weather conditions are on the other hand blamed for the deterioration in eastern Bulgaria and southern Italy. The latter region has moreover some of the highest concentrations of ground-level ozone in all of Europe.

The extent to which forest damage can be attributed to air pollution is in general difficult to determine, since the pollutants affect the forest ecosystem in many ways - also indirectly, for instance, by making the trees more vulnerable to natural stress, such as that caused by periods of drought.

The latest report includes, for the first time, a comparison of the fall-out of various pollutants with the critical loads for acidity, nitrogen, and heavy metals, with calculations for 230 intensive monitoring plots. The outcome has shown that:

• Critical loads for nitrogen set so as to give no further nitrogen accumulation in the soil are being exceeded at 92 per cent of the investigated plots.
• Critical loads taking into account nitrogen effects on trees are being exceeded at 45 per cent of the plots. At these plots an increased vulnerability to drought stress, frost, pest and diseases is to be feared.
• At 58 per cent of the plots nitrogen input is potentially endangering the plant diversity of the ground vegetation.
• For 33 per cent of the investigated plots the critical loads for acidity referring to effects on tree roots were being exceeded. Leaching of base cations or aluminium already occurs at lower acidity inputs. Related critical loads were being exceeded at 64 per cent of the plots.
• In general, highest excess acid depositions occur in central Europe and for nitrogen also in western Europe, where present loads are high and critical loads are relatively low.
• Critical loads of lead and cadmium were exceeded on 91 respectively 29 per cent of the plots. These results are based on very stringent criteria for possible impacts on soil organisms.

The figures on load exceeding refer to steady-state calculations, telling of the extent to which the fallout exceeded the critical limits, but giving no exact time for eventual damage. The latter can only be obtained from so-called dynamic modelling, which is intended to be developed within the survey during the next few years.

Per Elvingson

¹ The Condition of Forests in Europe. 2002 Executive Report. Published jointly by UN ECE and the European Union. Can be ordered from Federal Research Centre for Forestry and Forest Products, PCC of ICP Forests, Dr M. Lorenz, Leuschnerstr. 91, D-21031 Hamburg, Germany. Also available in pdf format at www.icp-forests.org

Results from national forest-damage surveys, 1998-2001. Percentage of trees with defoliation >25 per cent.

¹ Excluding maquis.

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CRITICAL LOADS

Worse than thought

New figures show acidification and eutrophication to be much greater in the Swedish ecosystems than has appeared from earlier estimates.

Much wider areas of Sweden are being affected by acidification and eutrophication than has previously been thought. According to a recent report¹ from the national Environment Protection Agency, the areas where critical loads are still being exceeded are actually two or three times greater.

The ways in which critical loads are estimated and mapped are described in the report, as is the way in which exceeding is determined. A critical load is a measure of the amounts of pollutants that any ecosystem can withstand without suffering damage. The critical loads for ecosystems that are sensitive to acidification and eutrophication are displayed on maps. In Sweden it is mostly surface waters and forests that are affected, but the area so involved amounts to about 90 per cent of the country's total area.

Wherever fallouts of pollutants exceed the critical loads, damage will sooner or later occur to the environment. Awareness of this is what has guided international agreements for cutting emissions of air pollutants under CLRTAP, the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, the latest being the Gothenburg Protocol of 1999. This kind of information has also served as a basis for the EU directive on national emission ceilings for four air pollutants that was adopted last year.

The calculations both for the Gothenburg protocol and the EU directive derived from maps drawn to a relatively loose scale (on a grid system with 150x150 km squares). Nor was account taken of the fact that depositions of acidifying and eutrophying pollutants will vary according to the way in which the ground is being utilized - the fallout will be greater for instance over forest areas than over open ground. The new Swedish estimates are based not only on somewhat revised data as regards critical loads but also on a map grid with smaller squares (50x50 km).²

The area of Sweden where the critical load for acidification is being exceeded accordingly then shrinks from 60 per cent in 1980 to 41 per cent in 1990, and away to 22 per cent in 1997. Assuming that the European emissions of sulphur and nitrogen fall off as envisaged in the Gothenburg protocol, the figures can be expected to drop to 13 per cent, or 5.1 million hectares by 2010. If account is taken of the greater amounts of pollutant deposited over forest areas, the figure should however be higher.

The new figures are about three times the size of those that were used in international negotiations - where the critical loads for acidification were assumed to have been exceeded on 16 per cent of the total area in 1990, and going down to 3.8 per cent in 2010 (that is, to about 1.5 million hectares). See chart A.

The area of forest land where the critical loads for nitrogen were being exceeded is estimated to have been 40 per cent in 1990 and 30 per cent in 1997. A further fall to 19 per cent - corresponding to 4 million hectares - is expected to have taken place by 2010. But even so, as can be seen from chart B, this would be at least three times more than previously assumed.

It is clear from the figures that international efforts to stem the emissions of air pollutants have yielded results in the form of gradually less exceeding of critical loads. The fact that the improvement has been slower as regards eutrophication than it has been for acidification is due to the relative lack of success in dealing with emissions of nitrogen compounds (nitrogen oxides and ammonia).

It appears from the EPA report that the resulting improvement from the Gothenburg protocol and the EU NEC (ceilings) directive will, in Sweden's case, be much less than anticipated. By 2010 Sweden will in consequence be one of those European countries with the largest area over which critical loads for acidification are still being exceeded. To arrive at a situation where critical loads would no longer be exceeded in Sweden would require a reduction of at least 75 per cent in the depositions of sulphur and nitrogen, from 1997 levels.

The authors of the report are careful to emphasize that both the European and the Swedish calculations result in maps showing only the general extent by which the critical loads are being exceeded at a given time. The data gives no information as to the state of the environment in each area. In fact soils and waters have become so acidified that it will take decades, in some cases centuries, before they are fully restored. Depending among other things on the ability of species to recolonize, biological diversity will also need time to recover.

Christer Ågren

¹ Kritisk belastning för svavel och kväve (Critical loads for sulphur and nitrogen). Editors: Ulla Bertills and Gun Lövblad. Report 5174. In Swedish only. Published by the Swedish Environment Protection Agency, 106 48 Stockholm, Sweden. Internet: www.environ.se.

² There has also of late been a change from 150x150 to 50x50 km squares in the European context, in what is being done within the LRTAP Convention and the EU Clean Air for Europe program (CAFE) in respect of critical loads, emissions and depositions.Percentage of ecosystem area where critical loads for acidification (A) and eutrophication (B) were being exceeded in Sweden in 1980, 1990, and 1997, with projections for 2010.

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GROUND-LEVEL OZONE

Causing large crop losses in Europe

Fresh estimates value the damage at several billion pounds sterling a year, with great variations from one country to another.

The damage to crops from ground-level ozone in Europe in 1990 has been valued at £4.3 billion. There is now a study¹ indicating that if every country were to reduce its emissions of the relevant air pollutants as agreed in the Gothenburg Protocol,² the sum would be reduced to £3.l billion in 2010.

The British scientists making the study have developed a computer model that makes it possible to estimate the European crop losses due to ground-level ozone more accurately than has hitherto been possible. The model uses data on the sensitivity of various crops to ozone, the actual concentrations in 1990 and the expected ones in 2010, to develop three different scenarios. It also takes into consideration the kinds of crops that are being grown in each place and at what time of the year.

The cost to the farmers is obtained by multiplying the harvest losses in each case by the world market price. For the whole of Europe in 1990 it came to £4.3 billion. Full implementation of the Gothenburg Protocol would however bring the sum down to £3.1 billion in 2010.

According to the reference scenario for 2010, with no consideration taken of the expected effects of the protocol the cost would amount to £3.3 billion. If on the other hand all countries were to go further than assumed under the protocol, and followed the so-called J1 scenario, on which the negotiations for the protocol were based, the cost would be no more than £2.8 billion.

France is estimated to have had the greatest crop losses in 1990, with Germany and Ukraine coming next. See table 1.

The differences between countries reflect the types of crop grown, the level of each one's production, the timing of crop growth in relation to months with the highest ozone concentration, as well as the climate and geographical location, with those countries closest to central Europe showing the greatest harvest losses.France could be expected to gain most from the lowered concentrations of ground-level ozone in 2010, followed by Germany, Poland, Italy, and Ukraine in descending order. See table 2.

Two crops - wheat and potatoes - are estimated to have accounted together for more than half (32 and 21 per cent) of the losses in 1990. Others accounting for more than 5 per cent of the total are sugar beet, pulses, and grapes.

There is no reference to possible losses from animal husbandry, which may mean a significant underestimation of the overall effects of ground-level ozone - since milk and meat account for more than half of European agricultural production.

It may therefore be relevant to consider that part of it that is connected with open grazing. Assuming that pasture has the same sensitivity as the average for other crops that have been assessed, and that changes in meat and milk production are linearly related with changes in pasture production, the damage total would mount by 68 per cent, in other words by £2.9 and £2.1 billion respectively for the years 1990 and 2010. The authors of the study urge further research into this phpect of the problem.

Since there is inevitably much room for uncertainty in calculations of this kind, they should be regarded as no more than approximate estimates of the effects of ground-level ozone. But research is continuing on ways to reduce the uncertainty. The model is being made for instance to include data on the extent to which the plants' uptake of ozone is affected by soil moisture, and a workshop is to be held in Gothenburg in November.

Per Elvingson

¹ Economic Assessment of Crop Yield Losses from Ozone Exposure. Available from the report's database on website: http://laburnum.aeat.co.uk/archive/reports/list.php (select heading Effects of Air Pollution on Natural Ecosystems).

² Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-level Ozone. Adopted in 1999 and aiming at reducing emissions of four pollutants - sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and ammonia - through the emission ceilings set for each country for attainment in 2010.

Table 1. Greatest crop losses in 1990 (£000.000).

Table 2. Greatest gain from reduced damage 1990-2010 (£000.000).

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CULTURAL HERITAGE

Endangered antiquities

Environmental deterioration is causing archaeological excavations to be carried out now, when they really ought to have waited.

Because archaeologists are expecting to find better methods than they have today, their policy has long been to dig as little as possible, but that principle is now being undermined by the discovery that unexcavated objects, especially of metal, are by no means safe, because of the soil having become acidified.

This has recently been proved in Sweden through a multi-scientific study, but archaeologists had already noticed several years ago that objects then being dug up were in worse shape than those from previous excavations in the same region.

Some 300 recently excavated objects were compared with 5000 bronze and iron artefacts from museum collections, together with soil samples and other environmental data.

The outcome confirmed the suspicion that the earlier objects had been dug up, the better preserved they were. The worst affected were those from western Sweden where acidification of the soil is most extensive and has been going on longest.

Corrosion is hastened especially by the acid from acidification, although salt from the sea, road salting, and farming also assists. Soot does the same, so that metal objects from cremation burials, and soil levels containing a lot of soot and ash, will be among the most affected.

The Swedish researchers recommend quick excavation at sites where increasing damage can be expected, as in the looser sandy soils of the west coast region. Objects in clay appear to fare better, and can be allowed to remain unexcavated.

It has been suggested that sites of archaeological interest should be limed. But this has never been tried and is therefore not recommended, because of the risk of damaging other material while preserving metal.

Source: Forskning & Framsteg. No. 5/02.

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OSLO PROTOCOL

Ceilings for sulphur more than met

When adopted in 1994, what is generally known as the Oslo Protocol¹ was regarded as breaking new ground - as being the first international agreement directed at reducing effects on the environment which also apportioned requirements for the reduction of emissions among the various countries, with the aim of attaining agreed environmental goals for the whole of Europe as cost-effectively as possible.

In the negotiations a computer model for integrated assessment was used. By providing various scenarios for the target year 2000, it helped the parties to arrive at an agreement for an intermediate environmental quality target to reduce overstepping of the critical loads for sulphur. The aim agreed upon prior to the start of negotiations was a "60-per-cent gap closure," meaning that overstepping of the critical loads for sulphur was to be brought down by at least 60 per cent from 1980 to 2000 in every part of Europe.

The same model was used for setting national ceilings for the emissions of sulphur - at the lowest cost for Europe generally. The outcome was a scenario, named A5, which was to serve as basis for the final negotiating.

It turned out a however that only a few countries were prepared to commit themselves to making the reductions required in A5 (see table). It should however be noted that the protocol includes commitments applying to some countries that go beyond the figures of the table, although set for meeting further on, either in 2005 or 2010.

The latest official report (see EMEP article) presents the final data for each country's emissions in 2000, thereby making it possible to see how well each had kept within its ceiling. It appears that all those that had ratified the protocol had in fact done that - and most of them with a comfortable margin. Of those that had not ratified - and so are not legally bound by the protocol - only Portugal had failed to keep within its ceiling. It is also the only EU country that has not ratified. Moreover Portugal was, together with Greece, alone in allowing its emissions of sulphur to increase between 1980 and 2000.

Not only had almost every country reduced its emissions a good deal more than required under the protocol, but with few exceptions had actually brought them down under the A5 ceilings.

Besides setting ceilings, the Oslo protocol contains clauses making compulsory the adoption of minimum requirements (in the form of emission limit values) for stationary combustion plants, as well as standards for a maximum allowed sulphur content in gas oil. Although it does not appear from the report concerning emissions whether these requirements have been carried out, it is to be hoped that Convention's Implementation Committee will be looking into this and evaluating the results in the course of the year.

Christer Ågren

¹ Protocol to the 1979 Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution on Further Reduction of Sulphur Emissions. Signed in Oslo, Norway, June 14, 1994. The protocol entered into force on August 5, 1998.

Reported national emissions of SO₂ 1980 and 2000, as compared to the national emission ceilings of the Oslo Protocol and the guide scenario A5 (000 tons).

n.a. = not applicable, n.d.a. = no data available.

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LCP DIRECTIVE

Benefits of compliance

Will depend in Britain on which of two alternatives are used for existing plants.

In August the UK environment ministry issued a consultation paper on the matter of transposing the EU directive for limiting emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particles from large combustion plants (2001/80/EC) into national law, which must be done by all member states by November 27, 2002.

During the negotiations leading to the adoption of the directive, the UK delegates had striven hard to get coal-fired power plants exempted from any new, stricter requirements, aiming to have existing plants (meaning those built before 1987) entirely excluded. This UK opposition strongly affected the final document, which now allows several possible alternatives for such plants - alternatives that will enable many old coal-fired plants to continue to be operated without having to be fitted with modern cleaning equipment.

The directive contains new, stricter emission limit values (ELVs) for new plants, but also requires emission reductions from existing ones. For the latter there are two main alternatives:

• To apply ELVs to each existing plant by January 1, 2008.
• To implement a National Plan, which will ensure the same emissions total from existing plants as applying ELVs for individual plants that were in operation in 2000 would have done.

A third alternative would permit the operators of an existing plant to avoid taking measures for abating emissions by committing to close it within 20,000 operational hours from January 2008. This derogation has as end date December 31, 2015.

According to the estimates of the UK environment ministry, the anticipated emission reductions from existing plants would be significantly greater if the ELV approach were used, rather than that of the National Plan (see table). It appears from its analysis that with the ELV approach the emissions of SO₂ in the year 2008 would be reduced by 116,000-235,000 tons, whereas under the National Plan they would be reduced by 0 to 157,000 tons.

The cost of implementing the directive for existing plants depends on which approach will be used, the ELV or that of the National Plan. For the period 2008-26, the total cost for the National Plan approach is estimated to range between £150 and £770 million, while that for the ELV would lie between £1,520 million and £1,620 million.

It is pointed out that the cost estimates are based on energy projections that assume future fuel prices in a high range. If low range estimates were used instead, the cost estimates would be significantly lower, because a much smaller amount of coal-fired generation is then projected.

On the basis of predicted reductions in emissions, the quantifiable benefits have been estimated, although only the reduction in damage to buildings and crops have been valuated in monetary terms. These benefits would nevertheless amount to £970 to £1,200 million using the ELV approach, and to £130-840 million under the National Plan. The figures show the total accumulated benefits over the period from 2008 to 2026.

The benefits analysis also includes estimates quantifying some types of reduced damage to health, such as avoidance of premature deaths and the number of life-years gained - but these have not been converted into monetary figures. It is stated that since certain benefits cannot readily be quantified with any confidence, the figures are likely to underestimate the total actual benefits.

Christer Ågren

The consultation paper is available at www.defra.gov.uk/environment.consult/lcpd/index.htm

Estimated emission reductions from existing (pre-1987) LCPs in the UK (000 tons).

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EUROPEAN EMISSIONS

Greatly differing trends

With some flagrant exceptions, reductions have on the whole been remarkable.

As shown by figures reported by each country to the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme, EMEP, the emissions of air pollutants continue to decline in Europe - the greatest change being for sulphur dioxide, the emissions of which from land-based sources went down by more than two-thirds between 1980 and 2000 (see factfile and table).

Emissions of nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and ammonia had also gone down, but not nearly as much. Those of the first two had actually increased from 1980 to 1990, but a subsequent decline has meant that by 2000 they had come down to such an extent as to leave them about a third less than they had been in 1990. After remaining practically unchanged throughout the eighties, in the following decade the emissions of ammonia went down by almost 20 per cent.

As can be seen from the table opposite, trends differ considerably from country to country. While most of them have brought down their emissions, and many to a remarkable extent, some have let them increase. The most flagrant example is Turkey, but there is a trend in the wrong direction in several EU countries as well. Examples are:

• Between 1990 and 2000 emissions of sulphur dioxide and VOCs increased in Greece and Portugal.
• Nitrogen oxides increased in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain.
• Ammonia increased in France, Ireland, and Sweden.

Also among the sinners was Norway, which allowed emissions of VOCs to increase by 20 per cent between 1990 and 2000. Emissions of ammonia also rose, while nitrogen oxides remained as they were.In the table the figures for international shipping derive from estimates made by Lloyd's Register during the nineties. Some rather different ones have however recently been worked out for the EU Commission (see article in this issue).

Coming as it does under the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, the EMEP is not confined to tracking emission figures. Also important is its modelling of the ways emissions from one country are affecting the environment in others. So far these calculations have been done in 150x150 km grid squares, but now a model has been developed for 50x50 km squares. Work on that is not altogether finished, which is why there is still no country-by-country matrices showing emissions and fallout.

Also in progress are efforts to include particulate matter in the computer model. Particulates call for attention because of their effects on health, and they will probably be taken into account when the time comes during the next few years to revise the agreement for reduction of the emissions of air pollution within the Convention (the Gothenburg Protocol) and within the EU (the directive on national emission ceilings).

Per Elvingson

Emission data reported to UNECE/EMEP: Quality assurance and trend analysis & Presentation of WebDab. MSC-W Status Report 2002. By V. Vestreng & H. Klein. EMEP/MSC-W Note 1/2002. Available from MSC-W, Norwegian Meteorological Institute, P.O. Box 43-Blindern, N-0313 Oslo, Norway. Can also be downloaded from www.emep.int/mscw/mscw_publications.html

Table: European emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides (as NO2), ammonia, and VOCs. 000 tons a year.

To view the table, either go to the pdf version of this issue, or visit the EMEP database at www.emep.int

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UNITED STATES

Not so clear skies

The Bush proposal gives higher pollution exposures, threatens local air quality, and prevents timely action to address the risks of global warming, according to NRDC.

Five years ago a comprehensive bill, called the Clean Power Act, aimed at control of the four major air pollutants released by fossil-fuel power plants, was put forward by Senator Jim Jeffords for consideration by the senate. Then in February this year President George W. Bush tabled his counterproposal, the Clear Skies Initiative (see AN 2/02).

The following comparison of these two proposals, which are now to be taken up in the senate and the congress, is based on a testimony presented this June before the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works by David Hawkins, director of the Natural Resource Defense Council's climate centre.Both the Bush administration and the sponsors of the Clean Power Act agree that air pollution from power plants imposes large costs on health, environment and the economy in the United States (see box).

While the Clean Power Act requires an annual cap of 2.25 million tons of SO₂ to be met by 2007, the administration's proposal allows twice as much pollution, 4.5 million tons, and does not require that reduction until 2010. The CSI briefing materials also imply that the SO₂ cap will be lowered, in a second phase, to a level of 3 million tons per year by 2018. But the fine print in the proposal says that an administrative review process is required before the second-phase cap can be set. This means that the reductions claimed for the second phase are no more certain than the outcome of a future process for setting the standard for ambient air quality.

As a result of the much higher caps for SO₂ under the CSI approach, the health and environmental damages would continue at much higher levels than under the CPA. Over the period 2007-2020, the CSI approach would result in at least 40 million tons more SO₂ emissions. The higher emissions allowed by CSI would inflict great damage to public health, including as many as 10,000 additional premature deaths every year for at least a decade. The Environmental Protection Agency has calculated the health benefits from SO₂ and NOx caps set at the level of the Clean Power Act to include the prevention of "over 19,000 premature deaths" annually. In contrast, it estimates the CSI approach will avoid "up to 9,000 premature deaths" in 2010.

As in the case of SO₂, the CSI approach also allows much higher NOx emissions than the Clean Power Act: 2.1 million tons beginning in 2008 compared to 1.51 million tons beginning in 2007. This results in 6.5 million more tons of cumulative NOx loadings between 2007 and 2020, even if one assumes that the EPA succeeds in lowering the cap to 1.7 million tons in 2018 as represented by the administration's descriptions of the Clear Skies proposal. These added emissions will also mean more acid deposition, more eutrophication of coastal waters, and more fine particle pollution than under the CPA.

For mercury, the CSI proposal sets an initial cap five times higher than the Clean Power Act: 26 tons per year starting 2010 compared to 5 tons per year starting in 2007. Compared to the CPA the CSI approach would result in a cumulative added mercury burden of 280 tons between the years 2007-2020 even if the EPA succeeds in lowering the cap in 2018. Because mercury is an accumulative toxin, these added tons will do damage for scores of years after they are released.

In developing its multipollutant proposal for the Bush administration last year, the EPA calculated the benefits of a set of caps that were essentially the same as those in the Clean Power Act. Using standard methods, it estimated the economic benefits of the health improvements resulting from the CPA as worth $154 billion annually. The compliance costs to achieve these enormous benefits were calculated at about $10 billion per year.

For comparison, the EPA estimates that the CSI approach will cost industry about $3.5 billion in 2010 and $6.5 billion in 2020 but cut health benefits in half. Consequently, the Bush administration's proposal would save industry an average of $5 billion annually over the decade from 2010-2020 but cost the public in excess of $50 billion annually over the same period in lost health benefits, most notably incurring an additional 10,000 avoidable premature deaths annually throughout most of this period. According to the NRDC, it is difficult to conceive of a justification for this decision and the administration has offered none.

Christer Ågren

Further information: 
www.whitehouse.gov, www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/tdh0602.php

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SMOG

A persistent threat to health

Americans continue to be exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution, says U.S. PIRG in a recent study,¹ reporting that in 2001 the national health standard of 80 ppb for ozone was exceeded on 4634 occasions in the US - an increase of about 10 per cent over the previous year. Considered by the number of times when the standard was exceeded, California, Pennsylvania and Texas were the smoggiest states. Moreover partial data for 2002 shows that the number will triple or quadruple in some states, compared with 2001.

The report comes as the White House is reviewing final regulations that will make it easier for major smog sources such as power plants and refineries to avoid cleaning up on air pollution. But PIRG insists that policy makers and regulators, rather than weakening the Clean Air Act, should strive to reduce emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides from the largest sources: motor vehicles and electric power plants. It suggests a number of measures for making a start on solving the smog problem, including:

• Aggressive enforcement of the Clean Air Act's New Source Review program by both states and the EPA.

• Adoption of a comprehensive new program to reduce emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and mercury from power plants, such as the one proposed by the authors of the Clean Power Act, passed this summer by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

• Adoption of federal emission standards for non-road diesel engines used in construction and farm equipment, as well as new standards for the diesel fuel that is used in these engines.

¹ Danger in the air. U.S. PIRG is the national lobbying office for the Public Interest Research Groups of the various states. The report is available at: www.uspirg.org

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In brief

Pointing the way

German carbon dioxide emissions could be slashed by 80 per cent from 1990 levels by the year 2050, according to the Wuppertal institute and the German space centre.

Three main criteria are identified for achieving the cuts: Annual energy efficiency improvements of 3-3.5 per cent would be needed over the next 20-30 years compared with about 1.7 per cent in the last decade. Primary energy production from renewable sources would have to grow to 12.5 per cent by 2010 and 50 per cent by 2050, goals already proposed under Germany's sustainable development strategy. Combined heat and power generation would have to be doubled or trebled.

Source: Environment Daily. September 17, 2002.

The Asian brown cloud

The Asian countries are facing a great challenge if they are to master ever increasing emissions of air pollutants. A warning of this effect has just been issued by UNEP, the UN Environment Programme, which was presented just prior to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in September.

The UNEP scientists note that this is both a local and a global problem. The local effects concern damage to crops and human health, but air pollutants are also affecting world climate, since the particles in the air reduce the incoming solar radiation, which in turn is thought to affect the winter monsoon, leading to much less rainfall over northwestern parts of Asia and much more along its eastern coast.

The Asian Brown Cloud: Climate and Other Environmental Impacts. UNEP and C4. ISBN 92-807-2240-9. Available at www.rrcap.unep.org

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Recent publications

A Citizen's Guide to Air Pollution (2002)
Edited by David V. Bates and Robert B. Caton. A collection of essays on air quality and air pollution, written primarily for policy makers and educators, which will also appeal to concerned citizens who want to have a greater understanding of air issues. $25. Published by The David Suzuki Foundation, Suite 219 - 2211 West 4th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V6K 4S2 Canada. More information available at www.davidsuzuki.org/Publications/Books/

Health and Clean Air Newsletter
Newsletter edited by Curtis Moore and David Bates, published with economic assistance from the California Air Resources Board. The latest issue (Summer 2002) is dedicated to the problem of small particles. Can be ordered in printed format from Health & Clean Air Newsletter, 1100 Eleventh Street, Suite 311, Sacramento, CA 95814, USA. Also available on the Internet: www.healthandcleanair.org

Cool Citizens: Everyday Solutions to Climate Change (2002)
A series of short reports from the Rocky Mountain Institute, of which the common thread is the changes we can make as individuals, consumers, commuters, etc. to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The first, Household Solutions, is already available; later ones will cover transportation solutions, at-work measures, food choices, travel and recreation, consumer goods purchasing, and so forth. Take a look at: www.rmi.org

Your way through the labyrinth (2002)
The 8th edition of an EU funding guide for NGOs produced by ECAS, a European citizens' advice bureau with 160 NGO members. For orders please contact ECAS, 53 rue de la Concorde, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.

Towards Sustainable Levels for Health and Nature (2002)
A review in English of emission targets and environmental quality objectives for the short and the long-term concerning acidification and continental air pollution in the Netherlands.18 pp. Published by the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, P.O. Box 20951, 2500 EZ Den Haag, The Netherlands. Related information can also be found at the Ministry's website: www.vrom.nl

Non-CO₂ Greenhouse Gases: Scientific Understanding, Control Options and Policy phpects (2002)
Proceedings of the Third International Symposium, held in Maastricht, Netherlands, January 21-23, 2002. 780 pp. Available from Millpress, P.O. Box 84118, 3009 CC Rotterdam, Netherlands. Internet: www.millpress.com

Good Practices in Policies and Measures for Climate Change Mitigation: A Central and Eastern European Perspective (2002)
Looks at the ways in which the countries of this region can address climate change. 103 pp. Can be ordered free of charge from the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Ady Endre út 9-11, 2000 Szentendre, Hungary. Also available in pdf format at www.rec.org/REC/Publications/publications.html

Ozone critical levels and effects on crops in Italy (2002)

A pamphlet telling of current research in Italy to determine critical levels for ground-level ozone with greater certainty. While confirming that measured concentrations are very high in Italy, it also emphasizes that environmental factors such as water availability have to be taken into account in order to correctly assess the damage. 16pp. Published by the Italian National Agency of New Technologies, Energy and the Environment (ENEA), Lungotevere Thaon di Revel 76, 00196 Rome, Italy. Internet: www.enea.it

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Published 15 October 2002.