Quality of emission inventory data: a European perspective

Emission inventories have been, and still are being, compiled within a broad range of national and international activities. The quality of the data in the inventories however is often not defined or not known. This paper concentrates on this aspect of European scale inventories and will present some examples from the field

The new CORINAIR system: an integrated set of tools for national emission inventories

National governments in Europe (and elsewhere) are, within the framework of a series of international protocols, required to annually report on the emissions of air pollutants. The European Commissions Environmental Directorate General (DG XI) initiated the compilation of the European Air Emission Inventory (CORINAIR) for the base year 1990 and later in order to improve the comparability and transparency of emission inventories produced by individual member states and to allow easy integration of such national data into the joint EU reporting mechanism. The European Environment Agency (EEA) took over responsibility for CORINAIR in 1994 as part of its work program

Why Factor Four bites back

"Factor Vier" is een begrip geworden in het milieubeleid nu het door minister De Boer als een belangrijke leidraad voor het milieubeleid op de wat langere termijn is genoemd. "Factor Vier" richt zich op het bereiken van duurzaamheid door het toepassen van betere, efficiëntere technologieën, waardoor de welvaart kan toenemen terwijl tegelijkertijd de milieudruk zal afnemen. Het impliciet technologische optimisme in deze benadering wordt in het onderstaande besproken in het licht van de vaak onverwachte reacties van de maatschappij op nieuwe technologie. Een en ander leidt tot de aanbeveling om naast de technologische en economische beschouwingen in het kader van "Factor Vier", ook gedragsaspecten expliciet mee te nemen. Als dat niet gebeurt, zal de techniek "terugbijten" en kan de beoogde winst worden teniet gedaa

Validation and verification of emission inventory data (chapter 5)

This chapter describes principles and practice of validation and verification of emission inventories as means to establish the quality of an emission inventory. It is argued that the perspective of the user of the data is important in defming the quality of emission data. Monitoring of the progress of (environmental) policy requires a different quality concept from the one that is used in scientific applications and the assessment of proposed abatement strategies. Validation is used for the assessment of the sound, agreed upon, approach of emission data collection, whereas verification refers to the establishment of the truth of the data. Validation therefore should be interpreted as the assessment of the procedural quality and verification as the assessment of the scientific quality

The revised EMEP/EEA Guidebook compared to the country specific inventory system in the Netherlands

Parties to the LRTAP convention have agreed to annually report atmospheric emissions and are required to set up an emission inventory. As a minimum, parties shall use the latest version of the EMEP/EEA Air Pollutant Inventory Guidebook, but most countries - including the Netherlands - have set up their own inventory, which uses country specific information to supplement the information from the Guidebook. In this study, emissions estimated within the Dutch Emission Inventory are compared to emissions estimated using Guidebook emission factors and Dutch statistics for the year 2005. The objective is to explore the quality of both methods and to find major differences and similarities. The comparison shows that for most sources, emission estimates are within uncertainty ranges for both methodologies, especially for sources where a higher Tier (more detailed) methodology is used to estimate the emissions. This is in line with the Guidelines which indicate that for key categories a more detailed methodology should be used. The comparison also shows some surprising differences, such as large differences in emission factors (especially Tier 1) and missing sources (fireworks and abrasion of railway overhead wires, causing 16% of total copper emissions in the Netherlands) which have not been included in the Guidebook. This comparison is shown to be a useful tool to identify areas where improvements and further research are necessary. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd