EU industrial air pollution cost up to €433 billion per year The cost of damage caused by pollutant emissions into the air from the largest 12,000 industrial facilities in 2017 has been estimated at €277–433 billion, and half of the total cost was caused by less than two per cent of plants. Read more
Editorial The World Health Organization is shortly expected to publish revised guidelines for the main hazardous air pollutants. These will be of major importance for the forthcoming revision of the EU’s Ambient Air Quality Directive – a revision proposal is scheduled to be presented by the Commission next year. Read more
Recycled batteries reduce dependence on imported raw materials A new study assesses the raw materials needed to make electric vehicle batteries and compares them with the materials needed to run a fossil fuel car. Read more
CO₂ emissions from the cement industry can be reduced without CCS Cement emissions in the EU fell more than 10 per cent in 2019–2020, demonstrating that fast, short-term cuts are possible. Read more
Norway’s romantically named Longship CCS project Will the Northern Light CO2 storage ever be commercially viable? Read more
Looking back over 40 years Four Swedish environmentalist organisations set up a joint project for the international dissemination of information on air pollution and acidification. This leads to the establishment of the Swedish NGO Secretariat on Acid Rain in January 1982, re-named the Air Pollution & Climate Secretariat (AirClim) in 2008. Read more
Agri-PV a useful synergy between agriculture and solar energy The co-developing of land for both solar photovoltaic power and agriculture has gained interest. Experts state that the synergy would benefit food and energy production, as well as decreasing both water demand and carbon emissions. Read more
Direct Air Capture: Billionaires dream of vacuuming carbon out of the atmosphere Direct air capture of CO2 is getting a lot of media traction, and a lot of finance from US billionaires. But the very few machines do not suck up much CO2, so Carbon Engineering uses Photoshop to increase their numbers. Read more
Opportunities for the Renewable Energy Directive The current Renewable Energy Directive does not deliver the results needed to meet the Paris Agreement. The transition of the energy system in EU member states from fossil fu- els to 100% renewable energy must accelerate. Read more
2021 – the make or break year for climate action In April 2021 the World Meteorological Organization published a new assessment in its State of the Global Climate 2020 report Read more
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