FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR GLOBAL AIR QUALITY

MANAGEMENT

Dr Martin Williams

Defra, UK

NERAM Colloquium V

Strategic Policy Directions for Air Quality Risk Management, Vancouver, 16-18

October 2006

Future Directions for Global Air Quality Management

Outline

• Urban AQM-how do we best use standards? world-wide?; are there better ways?

• Regional/transboundary/hemispheric air pollution problems– New issues and outreach

• Integration of policy areas –air pollution and climate change

Urban AQM and the role of standards

• WHO Global update of Air Quality Guidelines

• A significant development with opportunities and challenges for developing and developed countries

WHO Interim Targets and AQ Guidelines for PM

Annual Mean Level

PM10 PM2.5

WHO IT-1 70 35

WHO-IT-2 50 25

WHO IT-3 30 15

WHO AQG 20 10

• The fact that the guidelines exist will be beneficial to developing countries and should promote action

• The series of interim targets for PM in particular should be helpful

• But will there be counter-arguments from industry to challenge what they might argue are arbitrary numbers ?

• If so, how will the risk management process proceed without definitive exposure-response coefficients which would enable CBA and other evaluations?

• For developed countries, the same arguments apply, but also:

• The AQGs themselves will be very difficult to achieve – experience has shown this already in Europe for PM10 and NO2 and is likely to be the case for the AQG for PM2.5

• The CAFÉ process in Europe has to date not used a priori standards to manage PM but has used the chain

Scenario->emissions->exposures->health effects->monetised costs and benefits->air quality target/control measures

• As levels approach the AQG – certainly for PM, probably for the other pollutants – successive reductions will be difficult to justify. How will these difficulties be overcome?

• Persuasive evidence - role for authoritative evaluations and interpretations of the literature for policy purposes

• Do standards still have a role? Or does the exposure reduction approach have advantages ?

• It requires a reduction in the mean over all measurement sites in the area

Hemispheric transport Our current understanding

• Well documented evidence mostly in very clean environments as the Arctic and remote places and for air pollution episodes.

• Concerns tropospheric ozone, fine particulate matter, persistent organic pollutants, mercury …

• The size of intercontintental transport and its influence is poorly quantified. For some pollutants (Hg) in the range of 10 to 75 percent and thus significant.

• Also for ozone the hemispheric burden is significant. For PM the intercontinental transport less certain possibly up to 2 ug/m3

• The effectiveness of intercontinental transport depends on local and regional conditions. Often associated with meteorology such as deep convention and frontal systems (WCB).

November 20015 10 15 20 25 30

Ozo

ne

[p

pb

v]

0

20

40

60

80

100Horton Station (920 m)

Ozone at Horton stationSeaWifs image on 15 November

Ozone from MOZAIC ascent

North American pollution plume observed during CONTRACEStohl et al., JGR, 108, 4370, 2003

Huntrieser et al., JGR, 110, DO1305, doi: 10.1029/2004JD005045

50 Parties in Europe, North America and Central Asia50 Parties in Europe, North America and Central Asia

Introduction to TF HTAP

CONVENTION ON LONG-RANGECONVENTION ON LONG-RANGETRANSBOUNDARY AIR POLLUTIONTRANSBOUNDARY AIR POLLUTION

•The Task Force is charged to “plan and conduct the technical work necessary to:

• develop a fuller understanding of the hemispheric transport of air pollution ...

• estimate the hemispheric transport of specific air pollutants for the use in reviews of protocols to the Convention

• prepare technical reviews thereon for submission to the Steering Body of EMEP”

Policy-Relevant Science Questions

1. How does hemispheric transport affect air pollution?

2. How much do emissions in one country or region affect air pollution in another country or region?

3. How confident are we of the results and what is our best estimate of the uncertainties?

4. How will changes in emissions in one country or region affect air pollution in another country or region?

5. How may the source-receptor relationships change over the next 20 to 50 years due to changes in emissions?

6. How may the source-receptor relationships change due to climate change?

7. What efforts are needed to develop an integrated system of observation data and models?

Introduction to TF Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution

TF HTAP Assessment Products2009 Assessment Report• State of knowledge concerning intercontinental

transport of air pollutants in the Northern Hemisphere• Covering all pollutants of interest under the LRTAP

Convention• Addressing identified policy-relevant science questions

2007 Interim Report• Significance of intercontinental transport of air

pollutants within the Northern Hemisphere for attaining the objectives of the 1999 Gothenburg Protocol

Expectations for Assessment Products

Links between climate, air pollution and energy policies

• There are physical and economic interactions between the control of air pollution emissions and GHG mitigation

• If these problems are considered separately:• From the an air pollution perspective:

• Baseline AP emissions, impacts and control costs (for fixed AP legislation) depend on the level of GHG mitigation

• Costs of strengthened AQ policies depend on the level of GHG mitigation

• Further AP control strategies have co-benefits on GHG mitigation costs.

• From a climate perspective:• GHG mitigation costs depend on the level of AP

control• GHG mitigation costs have co-benefits on AQ impacts

Links between climate, air pollution and energy policies

Cost savings from an integrated approach - Provisional GAINS estimates, EU-25, 2020

90 €

20 €

0 €

National NEC projections

CAFE BL

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

110%

120%

75% 80% 85% 90% 95% 100% 105%

CO2 emissions relative to the UNFCCC baseyear emissions

Air

po

llu

tan

t e

mis

sio

ns

re

lati

ve

to

a 0

€ c

as

e

SO2 NOx PM25

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

20

25

95 100 105 110 115 No constraint

Health target (million life years lost)

Bill

ion

€/y

r

Benchmark -5% GHGs -10% GHGs -20% GHGs

Cost savings from an integrated approachProvisional GAINS estimates, EU-25, 2020

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

20

25

95 100 105 110 115 No constraint

Health target (million life years lost)

Bill

ion

€/y

r

Benchmark -5% GHGs -10% GHGs -15% GHGs -20% GHGs

Integrated approach: Joint optimization of GHG and air pollution control

Baseline

Ambition level of Thematic Strategy

Links between climate, air pollution and energy policies

• There are short term trade-offs:Diesels (Black Carbon vs CO2), CHP and Micro-CHP, SO2 & FGD

• There are longer term win-wins: Low carbon intensity energy generation; low carbon intensity transport, energy efficiency

Links between climate, air pollution and energy policies

• An integrated approach could reduce total costs for GHG mitigation and air pollution control.

• Cost savings can be immediate, they are “real money” and

they occur to the actors who have to invest into mitigation.

• GAINS –Global IAM model built at IIASA - offers a tool for such an integrated analysis to identify concrete measures that are beneficial.

Summary - Future directions for Global Air Quality Management

• Air Quality standards for protection of human health?• Global air quality standards with stepwise improvements

WHO 2005-opportunities but also threats• Exposure reductions ensure benefits for the population-if

they can be built into legislation• How to make progress when we are reaching a point of

diminishing returns? Standards alone may not be enough• Air pollution not only a local issue - transboundary character

of air pollution –ozone, PM … require regional and global measures

• Integration of policy areas –air pollution and climate change –cost effective joint policies – need to manage the short term trade offs and gain the longer term synergies

• Thank you

• Merci bien

• Diolch yn fawr