2. Goals and inventory background

2. Goals and Inventory Background

The aim is to produce a methodology and a system allowing to satisfy all European needs on air emissions inventories.

At present, the following has been identified as major activities and legal instruments requiring air emissions reporting :

• EEA needs of the Workprogramme.
• UNECE Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution Convention.
• EMEP model.
• PARCOM and HELCOM.
• EU CO2 monitoring mechanism.
• EU Large Combustion Plant Directive.
• EU VOC Directive (to be confirmed).
• UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
• and eventually other needs relating to economical, modelling, national and local considerations, air quality, integrated emission inventory, ...

Most of these requests include different specifications in term of substances, source sectors, geographical coverage and resolution, temporal aspects. Generally a short delay is requested for reporting (6 to 12 months).

To overcome the current mismatch between political and technical time constraints the ETC/AEM recommends to consider progressive steps which correspond to the following groups of data (4) :

Group 1: (within six months) provisional estimations of national total emissions for a first batch of pollutants (i.e. CO2) relating to the previous year.

Group 2: (within six next months) estimations of national level emissions by relevant source sectors of requested pollutants.

Group 3: (within the second year) final data of national level emissions by relevant detailed source sectors of all pollutants in turn.

Group 4: (within the second year but every 4 years) spatially disaggregated emissions at level NUTS III or equivalent.

As far as objective, reliable and comparable information is requested, the system has to be aware of completeness, consistency and transparency of data.

There is a clear similarity between these criteria and the concept developed within the CORINAIR project since 1986. The EEA has also inherited of the CORINAIR system developed in coordination with UNECE.

That is why recommendations are based on the gains from the CORINAIR experience (inventories of 1985 and 1990) and take into account specificities deriving from requests described above, especially those not included or partially included in CORINAIR 90.

Among the new items to be considered, the main ones :

• Facilities to speed up inventory achievement, and management of different inventory stages (national level inventory every year and detailed inventory, as CORINAIR 85 and 90, with a convergence process). Therefore, the system will enable to satisfy time delay of international requests on air emission inventories. This item deals especially with key questions on data model or processing of the system and should take into account the various national specificities.
• PARCOM and HELCOM : adaptation to achieve emission inventories for heavy metals and persistent organic compounds.
• IPCC : adaptation to get a more complete and relevant compatibility.
• Energy balance : in relation with IPCC needs and other demands as well as for a better quality of inventories.
• EMEP and LCPD : improvements for better management of information requested.
• Integrated Emission Inventories : first reflexions.
• EU VOC directive : data requested (if specifications are made available in due time).
• Software facilities : introduction of default emission factors, more relevant database/operator interfaces, windows version, network version, other improvements.
• Data dictionary and platform : use of a single data dictionary as well for individual CORINAIR databases as the centralized EEA database whaterer the platforms could be (e.g. PC/DOS - xbase and UNIX/ORACLE).
• General usability of data : selected actions should contribute to increase the possible range of applications by facilitating the ease of access and the ease of use. Among these actions are met kind and structure of information, creation of specific outputs as well as non technical actions (concertation producers-users, harmonization of methods, ...).