Measures to reduce emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases: the potential for synergies

Policies and measures to tackle air pollution

The National Emission reduction Commitments (NEC) Directive (EU, 2016) aims to deliver levels of air quality that do not harm human health or the environment. Achieving the national commitments to reduce emissions is key to meeting the objective of the clean air programme for Europe (EC, 2013) to reduce premature deaths resulting from exposure to air pollution and to delivering the zero-pollution ambition under the European Green Deal (EC, 2019). Moreover, there is potential to tackle air pollution in synergy with efforts to mitigate greenhouse gases under the EU’s climate and energy policies.

EU Member States [1] were required to report a national air pollution control programme (NAPCP) by 1 April 2019. This included policies and measures (PaMs) that Member States selected as relevant for fulfilling their commitments to reduce emissions set for the periods 2020-2029 and from 2030 onwards.

Twenty-four countries reported their NAPCPs (EC, 2020a), with 21 reporting additional PaMs that they intend to put in place to meet their emission reduction commitments. Two countries — Finland and the Netherlands indicated that they do not have any additional PaMs to report, meaning that they do not need any additional policies to meet their reduction commitments [2]. It should be noted that, in the absence of a strict definition of what constitutes a single policy or measure, Member States may differ in their approach. Some may have chosen to divide actions into separate PaMs, whereas others may consider one policy or measure to have multiple components and a broader scope. EU Member States altogether reported 602 single PaMs. Of the Member States that reported PaMs, the number of individual PaMs ranged from 11 (Cyprus) to 72 (Belgium).

According to a separate analysis of emissions inventories and projections reported under the NEC Directive, the majority of countries are unlikely to meet their 2020 emission reduction commitments for nitrogen oxides (NO_x), ammonia (NH₃) and fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) (EC, 2020a). Moreover, the effort required to reduce current emissions to meet the 2030 emission reduction commitments will be challenging (EEA, 2020).

This is reflected by the focus of the PaMs reported: the majority focused on three pollutants, NH₃, NO_x and PM_2.5. Action is anticipated across three sectors making significant contributions to air pollution, namely the transport, energy and agricultural sectors.

Figure 1 shows, for each Member State, the distribution by sector of PaMs that have been considered, but not necessarily already selected, for adoption at national level. Some Member States have chosen to target specific sectors for emission reductions. For example, Croatia and Germany are aiming more than half of their PaMs at the agricultural sector, while Estonia, Malta and Portugal are focusing roughly two thirds of their PaMs on transport.

The reduction in NO_x emissions required to achieve the 2030 reduction commitments is a major challenge (EEA 2020). This is the case in seven Member States, namely Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal and the United Kingdom. More than one third of the PaMs reported by these countries target NO_x emissions from the transport sector, which was responsible for 47 % of NO_x emissions in the EU-28 in 2018.

In 2018, agriculture accounted for 93 % of NH₃ emissions in the EU-28. Emissions of NH₃ are not declining at the same pace as the other main pollutants. Twelve countries have focused more than a quarter of their PaMs on reducing emissions from agriculture, and 60 % of the PaMs focused on the agricultural sector, anticipating the establishment or further development of a national advisory code of good agriculture practice (ETC/ATNI, 2020).

Figure 1. The sectoral focus of PaMs considered by EU Member States in 2019 under the NEC Directive (in % and absolute numbers) 

Note: Member States could report multiple sectors within the same PaMs, so the sum of percentages in rows may exceed 100 %. 
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Linking air pollution and climate mitigation actions 

The NEC Directive aims to work in synergy with climate and energy policies. However, the scope of reporting for PAMs differs slightly. Under the NEC Directive, countries only report two types of PaMs:

1. PaMs that have been ‘considered’ but not necessarily selected for adoption at national level;
2. PaMs ‘selected for adoption’, but not yet adopted into legislation
   
   

In contrast, under the Monitoring Mechanism Regulation (MMR), Member States are required to report all climate mitigation PaMs that they are currently drafting, have completed, have adopted and are planning to implement. When reporting air pollution PaMs, Member States had the option to flag whether they were related to existing PaMs aiming to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases, with this information reported on a voluntary basis.

In 2019, Member States reported additional PaMs to tackle air pollution under the NEC Directive, as well as a new set of PaMs under the MMR. This allowed for a comparison of air pollution and climate PaMs to understand the extent to which Member States are delivering consistent approaches that take advantage of possible synergies. The comparison revealed that strong action is focused on the energy and transport sectors under policies to both reduce emissions of air pollutants and mitigate greenhouse gases. In contrast, in the air pollution domain, more attention is given to the agricultural sector and to the need for further action to meet emissions reduction commitments for NH₃ (ETC/ATNI, 2020).

Figure 2 presents an overview of the single PaMs reported under the NEC Directive as selected for adoption, representing 379 out of a total of the 602 PaMs reported by 15 countries. It shows the share of PaMs aimed at delivering on the objectives of the NEC Directive for which the reporting Member State identified links to climate change. It also shows the main air pollutants that the PaMs target and the fraction of PaMs that are reported with quantified emission reductions.  

The PaMs selected for adoption are consistently aimed at reducing emissions of the main air pollutants, such as NH₃ and NO_x, while also often aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mainly CO₂ and CH₄). One third of the PaMs selected for adoption have either a connection to, or are the same as those reported under, the MMR for climate mitigation. Of these, over a third are targeted at reducing emissions from transport and a third focus on the energy sector, while a fifth of the PaMs are focused on the agricultural sector. However, the potential intersection between the two sets of PaMs (for climate and for clean air purposes) may be even greater, as Member States’ reporting of interlinkages across the two policy domains was voluntary and may be incomplete.

Air pollution reduction PaMs that were linked to climate mitigation policies tended to be reported together with more information on the expected reductions in emissions. Approximately 80 % of the PaMs linked to climate change mitigation contain at least one quantified emission reduction for one of the main air pollutants. In contrast, for those PaMs not reported as being linked to climate change mitigation, around 60 % were reported together with quantified emission reductions. Only three countries — Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom — reported quantified emission reductions for all of the PaMs that they reported as having been selected for adoption.

It was not possible to carry out an extensive analysis of the expected emission reductions owing to the manner in which the information was reported [3]. Nevertheless, based on the emission reductions quantified and reported by Member States, the expected total reductions by 2030 in emissions of NH₃, NO_x and PM_2.5 from three major polluting sectors, namely agriculture, transport and energy , are estimated as follows: 

• for NH₃, a reduction about 315 kt
• for NO_x, a reduction about 380 kt
• for PM_2.5, a reduction about 50 kt. 

It is important to note that these estimates capture only the impact on emissions of additional PaMs selected for adoption to meet emission reduction commitments under the NEC Directive, and so they do not capture the impact of all PaMs in place at national level. In addition, these figures represent an underestimate of the total reductions likely to result, given that emission reductions were not reported for all additional PaMs. Therefore, these estimates are incomplete and subject to uncertainty.

Figure 2. PaMs selected for adoption, showing: the proportion of PaMs linked to policies to mitigate greenhouse gases; the focus of the PaMs in terms of pollutants; the number of PaMs reported with quantified emission reductions; and the number of PaMs reported by country

Note: NMVOC, non-methane volatile organic compound