EURODELTA - Evaluation of a Sectoral Approach to Integrated Assessment Modeling - Second Report

Abstract

The EURODELTA project is a continuing collaboration between the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) at Ispra (Italy) and five air quality modeling teams at Ineris (France), the Free University of Berlin (Germany), Met.no (Norway), TNO (Netherlands) and SMHI (Sweden). This phase of Eurodelta investigates how different air quality models would represent the effect on pollutant impacts of applying, on a European scale, emission reductions to individual emission sectors. The reason for doing this is to test whether there are important sensitivities not captured by the sound science approach to air quality policy making on a European scale which is based on an integrated assessment (IA) approach and embodied in the IIASA RAINS/GAINS model. This study shows that there are important differences between sectors in the amount of concentration (deposition) reduction obtained by changing a pollutant emission. This difference is not accounted for in the present process used to evaluate future national emissions ceiling reductions for both beneficial effect and cost-effectiveness. This raises the possibility that, when national bodies consider how to implement an emission ceiling taking account of the information used in deriving that ceiling, choices might be made that are less effective than expected.