The Covenant of Mayors: In-depth Analysis of Sustainable Energy Action Plans

As part of the European Commission’s Covenant of Mayors Initiative, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has carried out an in-depth analysis of selected sustainable energy action plans (SEAPs). Based on a sample of 25 cities from different EU Member States, the study seeks to identify and extract the common and most important characteristics of how local authorities across Europe are developing and implementing this policy. The study examined the strategies used by different local authorities in their SEAPs, with specific analysis of methodology, policies, governance, external support and regional and national characteristics. This gives us a picture of the strengths and weaknesses of different cities in their attempts to reduce their total GHG emissions by 2020. The study focuses on two types of Covenant signatory: -cities already involved in climate, air quality, sustainability and energy plans who adapted their plans to the Covenant requirements -cities for which the Covenant was the point of departure for developing strategies to decrease their total emissions. Just as important are the conclusions drawn by the study, which cover areas such as: -best practices -circumstances favouring the adoption and implementation of local sustainable energy policies -small municipalities’ need for external support in developing their SEAP -the result of signatories joining forces to develop their SEAPs -the role of the covenant territorial coordinators (CTC)within the initiative.JRC.F.7-Renewables and Energy Efficienc

The Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy Reporting Guidelines

The Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy brings together local and regional authorities voluntarily committing to implementing the European Union’s climate and energy objectives on their territory. Signatory local authorities share a vision for making cities decarbonised and resilient, where citizens have access to secure, sustainable and affordable energy. Signatories pledge to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 40% by 2030 and to increase their resilience to the impacts of climate change. The Covenant of Mayors helps local authorities to translate their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction ambitions into reality, while taking into account the immense diversity on the ground. it provides signatories with a harmonised data compilation and reporting framework which is unique in Europe which assists them to follow a systemic climate and energy planning and monitoring at the local level. The Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP) template constitutes the standard reporting framework for Covenant Signatories. The SECAP template forms the skeleton of the individual action plans. The SECAP and its monitoring part allow signatories to collect and analyse data in a structured and systematic manner, serve as a basis for good climate and energy management and for tracking progress in implementation. This guide has been developed to assist signatories in understanding the Covenant reporting framework. It seeks to provide signatories with step-by-step guidelines throughout the reporting process. Step I is dedicated to guide signatories through the process of filling in the templates, namely Section I for the SECAP template and Section II for the monitoring template. Step II addresses the upload of documents such as the SECAP, while Step III is focused on the integrated checking system developed for the climate mitigation part of the template and official submission. The guide is enriched with some practical recommendations and concrete examples. Link to the SECAP Template and other technical material: http://www.covenantofmayors.eu/Covenant-technical-materials.html (selectable in URL below).JRC.C.2-Energy Efficiency and Renewable

Technical note: Coordination and harmonization of the multi-scale multi-model activities HTAP2, AQMEII3 and MICS-Asia3: simulations, emission inventories, boundary conditions and model output formats

We present an overview of the coordinated global numerical modelling experiments performed during 2012-2016 by the Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (TF HTAP), the regional experiments by the Air Quality Model Evaluation International Initiative (AQMEII) over Europe and North America, and the Modelling Intercomparison Study- Asia (MICS-Asia). To improve model estimates of the impacts of intercontinental transport of air pollution on climate, ecosystems and human health and to answer a set of policy relevant questions, these three initiatives performed emission perturbation modelling experiments consistent across the global, hemispheric and continental/regional scales. In all three initiatives, model results are extensively compared against monitoring data for a range of variables (meteorological, trace gas concentrations, and aerosol mass and composition) from different measurement platforms (ground measurements, vertical profiles, airborne measurements) collected from a number of sources. Approximately 10 to 25 modelling groups have contributed to each initiative, and model results have been managed centrally through three data hubs maintained by each initiative. Given the organizational complexity of bringing together these three initiatives to address a common set of policy relevant questions, this publication provides the motivation for the modelling activity, the rationale for specific choices made in the model experiments, and an overview of the organizational structures for both the modelling and the measurements used and analysed in a number of modelling studies in this special issue.JRC.D.5-Food Securit

Sources, sinks, and transatlantic transport of North African dust aerosol: A multi-model analysis and comparison with remote-sensing data

This study evaluates model simulated dust aerosols over North Africa and the North Atlantic from five global models that participated in the AeroCom phase II model experiments. The model results are compared with satellite aerosol optical depth (AOD) data from MODIS, MISR, and SeaWiFS, dust optical depth (DOD) derived from MODIS and MISR, AOD and coarse-mode AOD (as a proxy of DOD) from ground-based AERONET sunphotometer measurements, and dust vertical distributions/centroid height from CALIOP and AIRS satellite AOD retrievals. We examine the following quantities of AOD and DOD: (1) the magnitudes over land and over ocean in our study domain, (2) the longitudinal gradient from the dust source region over North Africa to the western North Atlantic, (3) seasonal variations at different locations, and (4) the dust vertical profile shape and the AOD centroid height (altitude above or below which half of the AOD is located). The different satellite data show consistent features in most of these aspects, however the models display large diversity in all of them, with significant differences among the models and between models and observations. By examining dust emission, removal, and mass extinction efficiency in the five models, we also find remarkable differences among the models that all contribute to the discrepancies of model simulated dust amount and distribution. This study highlights the challenges in simulating the dust physical and optical processes, even in the best-known dust environment, and stresses the need for observable quantities to constrain the model processes.JRC.H.2-Air and Climat

HTAP_v2: a mosaic of regional and global emission gridmaps for 2008 and 2010 to study hemispheric transport of air pollution

The mandate of the Task Force Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (HTAP) under the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) is to improve the scientific understanding of the intercontinental air pollution transport, to quantify impacts on human health, vegetation and climate, to identify emission mitigation options across the regions of the Northern Hemisphere, and to guide future policies on these aspects. The harmonization and improvement of regional emission inventories is imperative to obtain consolidated estimates on the formation of global-scale air pollution. An emissions dataset has been constructed using regional emission gridmaps (annual and monthly) for SO2, NOx, CO, NMVOC, NH3, PM10, PM2.5, BC and OC for the years 2008 and 2010, with the purpose of providing consistent information to global and regional scale modelling efforts. This compilation of different regional gridded inventories, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s for USA, EPA and Environment Canada’s for Canada, the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) and Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO)’s for Europe, and the Model Inter-comparison Study in Asia (MICS-Asia)’s for China, India and other Asian countries, was gap-filled with the emission gridmaps of the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGARv4.3) for the rest of the world (mainly South-America, Africa, Russia and Oceania). Emissions from seven main categories of human activities (power, industry, residential, agriculture, ground transport, aviation and shipping) were estimated and spatially distributed on a common grid of 0.1º × 0.1º longitude-latitude, to yield monthly, global, sector-specific gridmaps for each substance and year. The HTAP_v2.2 air pollutant gridmaps are considered to combine latest available regional information within a complete global dataset. The disaggregation by sectors, high spatial and temporal resolution and detailed information on the data sources and references used will provide the user the required transparency. Because HTAP_v2.2 contains primarily official and/or widely used regional emission gridmaps, it can be recommended as a global baseline emission inventory, which is regionally accepted as a reference and from which different scenarios assessing emission reduction policies at a global scale could start. An analysis of country-specific implied emission factors shows a large difference between industrialised countries and developing countries for all air pollutant emissions from the energy and industry sectors, but not from the residential one. A comparison of the population weighted emissions for all world countries, grouped into four classes of similar income, reveals that the per capita emissions are, with increasing income group of countries, increasing in level but also in variation for all air pollutants but not for aerosols.JRC.H.2-Air and Climat

Fire evolution in the radioactive forests of Ukraine and Belarus: future risks for the population and the environment

In this paper, we analyze the current and future status of forests in Ukraine and Belarus that were contaminated after the nuclear disaster in 1986. Using several models, together with remote-sensing data and observations, we studied how climate change in these forests may affect fire regimes. We investigated the possibility of 137Cs displacement over Europe by studying previous fire events, and examined three fire scenarios that depended on different emission altitudes of 137Cs, assuming that 10% of the forests were affected by fires. Field measurements and modeling simulations confirmed that numerous radioactive contaminants are still present at these sites in extremely large quantities. Forests in Eastern Europe are characterized by large, highly fire-prone patches that are conducive to the development of extreme crown fires. Since 1986, there has been a positive correlation between extreme fire events and drought in the two contaminated regions. Litter carbon storage in the area has doubled since 1986 due to increased tree mortality and decreased decomposition rates; dead trees and accumulating litter in turn can provide fuel for wildfires that pose a high risk of redistributing radioactivity in future years. Intense fires in 2002, 2008, and 2010 resulted in the displacement of 137Cs to the south; the cumulative amount of 137Cs re-deposited over Europe was equivalent to 8% of that deposited following the initial Chernobyl disaster. However, a large amount of 137Cs still remains in these forests, which could be remobilized along with a large number of other dangerous, long-lived, refractory radionuclides. We predict that an expanding flammable area associated with climate change will lead to a high risk of radioactive contamination with characteristic fire peaks in the future. Current fire-fighting infrastructure in the region is inadequate due to understaffing and lack of funding. Our data yield the first cogent predictions for future fire incidents and provide scientific insights that could inform and spur evidence-based policy decisions concerning highly contaminated regions around the world, such as those of Chernobyl.JRC.H.2-Air and Climat