Estimated impact of different factors on the reduction in emissions of NOX and SO2 from public electricity and heat production, EEA-32, 1990–2008

The charts show the estimated contributions of various factors affecting emissions from public electricity and heat production including public thermal, nuclear, hydro and wind plants. The top line represents the hypothetical development of emissions that would have occurred due to increasing public heat and electricity production between 1990 and 2006, if the structure and performance of electricity and heat production had remained unchanged. However, there were a number of changes to sector’s structure that tended to reduce emissions, and the contributions of each of these factors to the emission reduction are shown. The cumulative effect of all these changes was that emissions actually followed the trend shown by the lower bars.