Box 14B European atmospheric emissions inventories

The first recent attempt to produce a consistent European inventory was the Emission Inventory of Major Air Pollutants in OECD European Countries in 1980 (OECD, 1990), which was designed to assess pollution by large-scale photochemical oxidant episodes in Western Europe and to evaluate the impact of various emission control strategies on such episodes.

This inventory covered three pollutants ­ SO2, NOx and VOCs ­ categorised into nine main source sectors, and provided national totals, sectoral, large-point sources (utility power plants >200 MW electric) and 50 x 50 km gridded data for 17 European OECD countries based on official submissions from these countries. The final OECD inventory was reasonably complete (except for VOCs, for which problems of completeness and consistency remain) but was not fully consistent or transparent, despite the efforts of the OECD project team to refine the official submissions.

The experience of the OECD project was used in the development stage of the CORINAIR 1985 inventory. CORINE ­ CO-oRdination of INformation on the Environment ­ was established by a Decision of the European Communities (85/338/EEC) to develop an experimental project for gathering, coordinating and ensuring the consistency of information on the state of the environment in the European Community. One of the CORINE projects, CORINAIR, aimed to compile a coordinated inventory of atmospheric emissions from the 12 Member States of the Community in 1985.

CORINAIR85 covered the same three pollutants as the OECD project and recognised eight main source sectors. It was a major step forward in international emission inventory methodology, although it is now recognised (McInnes and Pacyna, 1992) that the requirements of completeness, consistency and transparency were not fully achieved. The VOC inventory was not complete, there were inconsistencies in the use of some emission factors which were not fully resolved, and restrictions on the number of fuels which could be specifically included reduced transparency.

Protocols on the reduction of emissions or transboundary fluxes of sulphur, oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds (the SO2, NOx and VOC Protocols), adopted under the UNECE Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP), commit Signatories to reductions in emissions or transboundary fluxes within agreed timetables and to submit national emission data annually.

During the 1980s it was recognised that the data submitted by the Signatories did not fully meet the requirements of completeness, consistency and transparency. Consequently, the Cooperative Programme for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long Range Transmission of Air Pollutants in Europe (EMEP) established guidelines for the estimation and reporting of emission data (Pacyna and Joerss, 1991) and set up a Task Force on Emission Inventories (McInnes and Pacyna, 1992) to improve guidance on international atmospheric emission inventory methodology.

Recognising the case for consistency and harmonisation, this activity collaborated with the CORINAIR project team to develop a common CORINAIR/EMEP source sector split with 11 main source sectors, which was adopted by the Convention Executive Body in 1991.

The European Commission has maintained the CORINAIR Expert Group to produce an emissions inventory for 1990 ­ CORINAIR90 ­ which from now on will be coordinated by the European Environment Agency.

The CORINAIR90 project has developed the original CORINAIR source nomenclature to cover about 250 activities and eight pollutants within the main 11 source sectors agreed with EMEP. A more detailed data processing system has also been developed to improve the completeness, consistency and transparency for the 1990 inventory.

The system has been made available to about 30 countries in Europe to help them develop their national methodologies and their submissions to both the LRTAP Convention and, where appropriate, the European Commission. The first results from the CORINAIR90 project only became available in the closing stages of preparing this report and they were therefore unable to be fully integrated into the current assessment. An example of the type of data that will be available from CORINAIR90, is illustrated in Map 14.1 where national emissions of SO2 and the contribution of 11 main sectors to the national totals are presented.


Map 14.1 - European SO2 emissions by country and main sector, reported by CORINAIR,1990

Source: CORINAIR90