ETC/CME Report 2/2019: Impacts of Renewable Energy on Air Pollutant Emissions

13 May 2019

Tom Dauwe

This report describes an approach to estimate the impact of gross final consumption of renewable energy sources on air pollutant emissions.

The introduction chapter presents the context for this exercise and more information on the considered air pollutants.

The chapter on the methodological framework contains the method implemented to estimate the renewable energy effect on air pollutant emissions. The approach builds on the previously developed EEA method to estimate avoided greenhouse gas emissions due to renewable energy consumption. That chapter also gives an overview of available data sources and of the data source finally implemented to approximate the RES consumption effects on air pollutants, i.e. the GAINS database – specifically the set of ‘underlying data’ on activity and emissions that the European Commission consulted with the Member States and published on its website - http://ec.europa.eu/environment/air/reduction/assumptions.htm. Subsequently, the calculation of historic implied emission factors and reference emission factors based on these data is described. The methodology chapter also contains the results of the implied emission factor for the EU-28 as a whole. The detailed results of the implied emission factor per Member State are included in the separate data annexes, ‘Results of implied emission factors per Member State based on GAINS data’, accompanying this report. Short discussions focusing on high/low values and on deviating trends are included.

The last chapter presents the overview of the renewable energy consumption effect on emissions of air pollutants at the EU level.

Prepared by: Ils Moorkens, Tom Dauwe (VITO, BE)

Published by: ETC/CME, May 2019, 81 pp.

Publication number: Eionet report ETC/CME 2019/2