No. 3, October 1999

Main articles summarized

Editorial: Strange behaviour
Most countries are unwilling to take the necessary steps to cut down emissions even to the extent required to meet the modest targets for which they themselves had voted barely half a year ago.

New protocol on the way
Early in September the representatives of more than thirty countries agreed in Geneva on a new, so-called multi-effects protocol to the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. It will now be possible for the Convention to celebrate it 20th anniversary by gathering together a large number of environmental ministers to sign the protocol on December 1.

Emission ceilings
Planned for adoption in March, but then shelved, a proposal for a directive on national emission ceilings for acidifying and ozone-forming pollutants was rather surprisingly passed in June.

Ground-level ozone
Limit values for concentrations have been set to protect health and vegetation. But for various reasons they could not be made binding.

Goods transporting
Due to difficulty of reaching agreement between countries, freight carrying by road is being taxed too low. A new system is proposed to overcome this problem.

Outlook for 2010
Seeing few signs of recovery so far, the EU environmental agency has looked at what will happen lacking any fresh legislation.

Northeast Asia
Four writers in the scientific journal Ambio present three alternative scenarios for attacking the problem of air pollution.

Transport and health
Meeting in London in June, fifty countries in the WHO European region agreed on a Charter for Transport, Environment, and Health, which may be promising.

A great killer
Report to WHO shows more people being killed by air pollution from traffic than by road accidents, small particles being chiefly suspected.

Eutrophication
Great increase in algal blooms is believed to be due to increased inputs of nitrogen, about equally for land and air, to the seas.

Nuclear phase out
Nuclear power can be phased out while yet reducing carbon dioxide emissions, according to calculations made by WWF.

NOx from diesels
With EU standards in the offing, makers of heavy vehicles will have to find a solution to this problem. There is now a new system promising to halve emissions.

Back to top

EDITORIAL

Strange behaviour

The new multi-effect protocol to the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution certainly represents an advance. Thanks to extensive, skilfully prepared work it became possible to attain something that had seemed almost utopian when started in the summer of 1994: to work out an agreement involving environmental quality targets to combat four different kinds of environmental effect and including requirements for reducing emissions of four pollutants.

It is all the more deplorable to have to recognize that most of the participating countries are unwilling to take the necessary steps to cut down emissions even to the extent required to meet the modest targets for which they themselves had voted barely half a year ago.

Environmental demands are ever more frequently met with the excuse that "we as a country cannot proceed alone," followed by others such as "it would impair our international competitiveness," or "it would be pointless, since anything we could do would have so little effect on the general situation." The final escape is usually "the problem can only be solved by international agreement."

The Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution came about precisely to overcome this reluctance. Under it, too, many countries have laid down great effort to reach concrete proposals for internationally agreed measures. Although they fail to have global application, these measures nevertheless affect the greater part of the "international competition" (the Convention is supported by forty countries in Europe and North America).

After five years of data gathering, analyses, meetings of experts, and negotiations, a plan of action emerged. Its environmental aims are clearly expressed, and all the countries have had a hand in setting the targets. It has moreover been based on a thoroughgoing analysis of cost effectiveness, spreading commitments so as to attain its aims at the lowest possible cost. On top of all this, an analysis of the economic benefits was made, showing that the overall gain would be most likely to exceed the outlay five times over.

What then was the response of the various countries to the plan? At the final meeting for negotiation in Geneva, several countries, including Portugal, Belgium, France, and Italy, laid claim to national ceilings for emissions that were higher than those in the plan. Portugal's figures for all four pollutants were moreover higher than they would be as a result of current legislation and the country's existing commitments. Still more astonishing, perhaps, was the fact that not even those countries that are normally active in these matters - such as Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria - were prepared to give full backing to the proposed ceilings.

The reasons for this seemingly strange behaviour on the part of the participants are many. Some countries are using the Convention as a means of demonstrating their opposition to some proposed EU legislation (especially the NEC directive). Some, too, have given way to the powerful lobbying by industry against stricter environmental requirements. The Confederation of European Industry (UNICE) claimed for instance in a press release dated August 13 that the new protocol (then only in draft) would impose unrealistic demands on industry.

Some countries consider that they have already done more than others, and so do not want to do anything further until the others have caught up with them. A further reason, unfortunately all too common, is that many countries have simply not done their homework (although they do not care to admit it). They have not dug up the necessary information and analyzed what they actually could do. Consequently they have failed to gain popular support for any more advanced measures.

The debate on national ceilings in the EU will probably be going on for a year or two more before any directive is decided upon, so there is still time for each country to make a proper analysis of its own situation. In any case, after five years review and revision are envisaged both for the protocol to the Convention and to the EU directive on ceilings. Work in preparation for this ought to start right away. And to ensure wide support for further measures to reduce emissions, public awareness and knowledge of the problems will have to be improved.

Christer Ågren

Back to top

FOUR IN ONE

New protocol on the way

Early in September the representatives of more than thirty countries agreed in Geneva on a new, so-called multi-effects protocol to the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. The aim is to noticeably lessen acidification, eutrophication, and the formation of ground-level ozone - by setting national ceilings for emissions of the four pollutants that are the cause of all this, namely sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and ammonia. The ceilings are to be binding, and each nation must have brought emissions down under it ceilings by 2010.

It will now be possible for the Convention to celebrate it 20th anniversary by gathering together a large number of environmental ministers to sign the protocol in Sweden, at Göteborg, on December 1.

Although the preparations for the new protocol have been going on for the last five years, actual negotiations to obtain definite commitments from the various countries only started last January (see AN 1/99). The negotiating body for the Convention, the Working Group on Strategies, has subsequently gone through three week-long sessions, the last of which took place between August 26 and September 3.

Last year, in order to facilitate negotiations, the convention countries agreed on what was called a guiding scenario as a means of starting the process. The aims embodied in that scenario correspond closely with those in the EU Commission's proposal for a directive on national emission ceilings for four pollutants, the NEC directive (AN 2/99). They differ in that the convention protocol covers eutrophication as well as acidification and ground-level ozone.

The last meeting of the negotiators dealt with two matters of principal importance: the levels for the various countries' ceilings, and national commitments in general.

To begin with, each country was allowed to present its ideas on the ceilings it should have in comparison with those of the guiding scenario. In most cases they turned out to be way above the scenario figures. Some countries even proposed figures that were higher than those in the reference scenario, showing how much emissions might be expected to drop as a result of measures already taken. An estimate was then made, by using the IIASA's RAINS computer model, of the environmental consequences of the countries' proposals for ceilings. Hardly surprisingly, they came closer to the reference scenario than to the guiding scenario. In other words, they were far from coming up to the environmental targets that had been agreed upon barely half a year earlier.

Later in the meeting there was a tour-de-table, in which some countries put forward better (i.e. lower) figures for their emission ceilings, while others - as an expression of disappointment of the general lack of enthusiasm for doing anything serious - proposed higher figures for their ceilings. The final result can be seen from Tables 1 and 2. Putting it briefly, it may be said that the figures for sulphur emissions are 34 per cent higher in the draft protocol than in the guiding scenario, and 10 per cent higher for each of the other three pollutants. This will in turn mean that the area of Europe where depositions will exceed the critical loads for acidification will be almost doubled, going up to 15.2 million hectares as against the 7.9 million hectares set as the interim target. The exposure of the population to ozone levels above the critical level of 60 ppb would be nearly 40 per cent higher (Table 3).

It view of this poor outcome, it was agreed to give the countries the possibility of coming forward with improved (i.e. lower) figures for their ceilings. They will have just one month, until October 14.

The new protocol also contains binding requirements in the form of emission limit values (ELVs) both for stationary and mobile sources, as well as for fuel standards. The ELVs for large combustion plants are very similar to those put forward last year by the EU Commission in its proposal for a revision of the LCP directive (see AN 3/98). In the case of the protocol however, the text provides a loophole making it possible for the countries to evade the requirements. It says that as an alternative to the mandatory application of emission and fuel standards, a country "may apply different emission reduction strategies that achieve equivalent overall emission levels for all source categories together." There are also binding emission standards for existing (as opposed to new) sources, but for them there will be a longer respite, and the same "outs" will apply as for the above.

There is an annex to the protocol aimed at bringing down the emissions of ammonia, too, through some measures for agriculture that are more or less binding.

The United States and Canada had to be dealt with separately, since North America is not included in the advanced modelling that is being done for Europe and serves as a base for negotiations. Firstly, these two countries will only have to make commitments for SO₂, NOx, and VOCs, the reason being that they are agreed that they have no problems from transboundary movements of reduced nitrogen compounds. Secondly, it is assumed that they will want to take advantage of the possibility of confining their commitments to reduce emissions to so-called PEMAs (Pollutant Emission Management Areas). Thirdly, no commitments for emission ceilings (for a whole country or for PEMAs) can yet be proposed for them, since they are unlikely to have concluded their bilateral negotiations on these matters until sometime next year.

Russia, too, has used the possibility of defining a PEMA, in this case making it include two regions in the northwestern part of the country - Kola/Karelia, Leningrad/Novograd-Pskov - and also Kaliningrad, making a total area of at least 500,000 sq. kilometres. Any commitments Russia may make will thus only apply to these parts of the country.

Christer Ågren

For details of the basic analysis for the new protocol, see a) previous articles in Acid News, and b) the following reports from International Institute for Applied System Analysis.

. Emission reduction scenarios to control acidification, eutrophication and ground-level ozone in Europe. Part A: Methodology and databases. Part B: Emission reduction scenarios (November 1998).

. Limiting Marginal Costs of Emission Reductions (March 1999).

. The outcome of the analysis is summarized in the Draft Report for the Working Group on Strategies (June 1999),

. The analysis of the environmental results of the decisions taken at the last meeting to negotiate the new protocol appears in Draft Analysis (September 1999).

IIASA's reports are available on the internet at www.iiasa.ac.at/~rains.

Table 1. Emissions levels from the REF and guiding (G5/2r) scenarios. "Draft" = the figures put forward by the various countries at the meeting of the Working Group on Strategies on September 3, 1999 (1000 tons).