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Rapid economic and industrial growth in China has led to serious air pollution with high concentrations of suspended fine particulate matter (PM2.5), in particular during winter. On a regional scale, meteorological conditions play a major role in modulating the accumulation, transport, removal and transformation of air pollutants. These meteorological conditions are affected by large-scale circulation patterns over China, dominated by the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM). However, previous studies of how the large-scale winter circulation modulates air quality in China primarily focused on the North China Plain. The study of regional differences in the dominant large-scale circulation patterns needed to project future climate-driven PM2.5 concentration changes is far from complete. On longer inter-annual timescales, the EAWM is in turn influenced by El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the ensuing Pacific-East Asia teleconnection pattern. Better understanding of the ENSO-EAWM relationship and changes in this relationship under global warming is needed. Firstly, the influence of large-scale circulation on daily PM2.5 variability through its direct effect on key regional meteorological variables over three major populated regions of China (Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, BTH; the Yangtze River Delta, YRD; the Pearl River Delta, PRD) is examined, based on a new high-resolution air quality reanalysis dataset for China for five winters from December 2013 to February 2018. In BTH, a shallow East Asian trough curbs northerly cold and dry air from the Siberian High, enhancing PM2.5 pollution levels. Weak near-surface southerly winds in eastern and southern China, associated with a weakened Siberian High, suppress horizontal dispersion, contributing to air pollution accumulation over YRD. In PRD, weak southerly winds and precipitation deficits over southern China are conducive to high PM2.5 concentrations. To account for these dominant large-scale circulation–PM2.5 relationships, we propose three new circulation-based indices: a 500 hPa geopotential height-based index for BTH, a sea level pressure-based index for YRD and an 850 hPa meridional wind-based index for PRD. These three indices can effectively distinguish clean days from heavily polluted days in these regions, assuming PM2.5 variability is solely due to meteorology. Subsequently, the influence of the winter large-scale circulation on daily PM2.5 concentrations and on the sensitivity of PM2.5 to emissions over major populated regions of China with a focus on YRD is investigated, using the United Kingdom Earth System Model, UKESM1. Weak flow of near-surface cold, dry air from the north and weak inflow of maritime air are conducive to air pollution over YRD for 1999–2019. These provide favourable conditions for the accumulation of local pollution but limit the transport of air pollutants into YRD from the north for 2014– 2019. Based on the dominant large-scale circulation, we construct a new index using the north-south pressure gradient to project PM2.5 concentrations over the region. We show that this index can effectively distinguish different levels of pollution over YRD and explain changes in PM2.5 sensitivity to emissions from local and northern regions. We then project future changes in PM2.5 concentrations using this index under the weak climate and air pollutant mitigation scenario (SSP3- 7.0). We find an increase in PM2.5 concentrations over YRD due to climate-driven circulation changes that is expected to partially offset the effect of emission control measures in the near-term future. Finally, changes in the relationship between ENSO and the EAWM at various global warming levels during the 21st century are examined based on experiments from the Max Planck Institute Grand Ensemble (MPI-GE) that represent the upper boundary of the range of emissions scenario (RCP 8.5). The externally forced component of this relationship (i.e. forced by greenhouse gases and anthropogenic aerosol emissions) strengthens under moderate warming (+1.5 ◦ C), and then weakens for +3 ◦ C warming. These changes are characterised by variations in strength and location of the core of El Niño-related warming and associated deep convection anomalies over the equatorial Pacific leading to circulation anomalies across the Asian-Pacific region. Under global warming, the ENSO–EAWM relationship is strongly related to the background mean state of both the EAWM and ENSO, through changesin the EAWM strength and a shift of the ENSO pattern. Anthropogenic aerosols also play a key role in influencing the ENSO–EAWM relationship under moderate warming (up to 1.5 ◦C). These results demonstrate the importance of understanding the occurrence of days with elevated PM2.5 concentrations and explaining changes in the sensitivity of PM2.5 to emissions from local and surrounding regions from a large-scale perspective. These findings could help project the occurrence of heavily polluted PM2.5 days during wintertime and assess future emission control strategies for PM2.5 air quality improvement under climate change. Furthermore, the ENSO–EAWM relationship is shown to have a substantial inter-decadal variation under global warming. This may further improve the accuracy of future predictions of air quality in China.

In Korea, rice is a major staple grain and it is mainly cultivated using various types of agricultural machinery. Air pollutants emitted from agricultural machinery have their origins mainly from the exhaustion of internal combustion engines. In this study, the emission characteristics of five main air pollutants by the European Environment Agency’s Tier 1 method for rice cultivation were analyzed. Diesel is a main fuel for agricultural machinery and gasoline is generally used only for rice transplanters as a fuel in Korea. Tractors consume 46% of total fuel consumption and 56% of diesel fuel consumption. Gasoline used for rice transplanters accounts for about 17% of the total fuel consumption each year. Tractors and rice transplanters emit 82% of all total pollutants. From 2011 to 2019, the total amount of air pollutant emissions decreased by 15%. That accounted for the reduction of rice cultivation fields in those periods. Rice transplanting operation accounts for 42% of total emissions. Then, harrowing, harvesting, tilling, leveling, and pest control operations generated 10%, 10%, 8%, 8%, and 7% of total emissions, respectively. The contribution of each air pollutant held 54% of CO, 39% of NOx, 5% of NMVOC, and 2% of TSP from the total emission inventory. The three major regions emitting air pollutants from mechanized agricultural practices were Jeollanam-do, Chungcheongnam-do, and Jeollabuk-do, which consume 55% of the total fuel usage in rice farming. The total amount of air pollutant emissions from rice cultivation practices in 2019 was calculated as 8448 tons in Korea.

Submitted by Nadir Basilio (nadirsb@uninove.br) on 2022-05-10T14:22:34Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Murillo Caldeira dos Santos.pdf: 12807320 bytes, checksum: 37ace34784ff5e20a3e7867f9c92230f (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2022-05-10T14:22:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Murillo Caldeira dos Santos.pdf: 12807320 bytes, checksum: 37ace34784ff5e20a3e7867f9c92230f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2021-11-18 Seaports are the main intermodal structure of the global supply chain. Point of connection between international markets, it is a highly complex logistics platform, housing different players searching for profitable and resilient maritime lines. Changing the application of a seaport after its construction is a hard task, and space for expansion is scarce. Aiming to reduce the distances between the planet's northern and southern hemispheres, ship owners developed maritime routes connecting central hub ports to concentrate goods, knowing that they are essential to its primary hinterland. The existence of a central hub port implies a competitive advantage for the municipality that hosts it; however, operational bottlenecks intensify the conflicts and influence negatively daily life. One of the main bottlenecks in this relationship is road access management, a hard-to-be-mapped, random operation. The increase in traffic density on primary accesses, reported since the beginning of the XX century in ports located in developed markets and the last decade in ports of emerging markets, weakens the relationship between the port and the city by causing congestion on the highways, mostly shared with urban traffic, and rise the emission of pollutants around port terminals. In an attempt to dilute vehicle traffic in the primary area, hub ports installed regulatory yards and adopted truck appointment systems. Added to the IT limitations are the challenges of shared management of a port located in an emerging country. Current models for road port access are static, single-window non-synchronized truck appointment systems, and it is noteworthy that other industries have formatted dynamic strategies for managing operational conditions. As a contribution, this case study develops a dynamic model of road port access. Also, it verifies the effectiveness of its application in the port-city relationship indicators in an emerging market global hub port, the Port of Santos, confronted with two ports in developed countries, the Port of Barcelona and the Port of Bremen/Bremerhaven, prospecting optimal conditions for their implementation in an environment with significant institutional obstacles. After the development of the model, the execution of the simulations, and the application in the surveyed ports, it was identified that the adoption of a dynamic model for road access by seaports could reduce the impact of the port activity on the city's daily life when the most expressive indicators of this interference are observed. O porto marítimo é a principal estrutura intermodal da cadeia de suprimentos global. Ponto de conexão entre mercados interacionais, trata-se de plataforma logística de alta complexidade, abrigando diferentes intervenientes na busca por linhas navegáveis rentáveis e resilientes. É árdua a tarefa de mudar a aplicação de um porto após sua construção, e áreas para expansão são escassas. Visando reduzir as distâncias entre o hemisfério norte e sul do planeta, os armadores direcionaram as rotas marítimas para portos centrais concentradores de carga, fundamentais à hinterlândia primária. A existência de um porto central implica em vantagem competitiva para o município que o sedia, contudo, gargalos operacionais intensificam os conflitos e influenciam negativamente a vida cotidiana. Um dos principais conflitos existentes nessa relação é a gestão dos acessos terrestres, carregados de alta aleatoriedade e difíceis de serem mapeados. A elevação da densidade do tráfego nos acessos primários, relatados desde o início do século atual em portos de mercados desenvolvidos e na última década em portos de mercados emergentes, enfraquece a relação entre o porto e a cidade por causar congestionamentos nas rodovias, em sua maioria compartilhadas com o tráfego urbano, e aumentar a emissão de poluentes no entorno dos terminais. Na tentativa de diluir o trânsito de veículos na área primária, os hub ports instalaram pátios reguladores e adotaram sistemas de agendamento de caminhões. Agrega-se às limitações tecnológicas os desafios de gestão compartilhada de um porto localizado em mercado emergente. Os modelos de acesso portuário terrestre existentes são estáticos de janela única sem sincronização, e ressalta-se que outros segmentos da economia iniciaram a formatação de estratégias dinâmicas de gestão das condições operacionais. Como uma contribuição à literatura, este estudo de caso desenvolve um modelo dinâmico para acesso portuário terrestre, verificando a efetividade da sua aplicação nos indicadores da relação porto-cidade em um hub port global de um país emergente, o Porto de Santos, confrontado com dois portos de países desenvolvidos, o Porto de Barcelona e o Porto de Bremen/Bremerhaven, prospectando condições ótimas para sua implementação em um ambiente com obstáculos institucionais significativos. Após o desenvolvimento do modelo, a execução das simulações e a aplicação nos portos pesquisados, foi identificado que a adoção de um modelo dinâmico para acesso terrestre de portos marítimos pode reduzir o impacto da atividade portuária no cotidiano do município quando observados os indicadores mais expressivos dessa interferência.

Catalysts : open access journal 11(11), 1339 (2021). doi:10.3390/catal11111339 special issue: "Special Issue "New Challenges in Electrocatalysts for Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Production" / Special Issue Editors: Dr. Davide Clematis, Guest Editor; Prof. Dr. Fabrice Mauvy, Guest Editor; Dr. Jan Van Herle", Published by MDPI, Basel

The constant push toward higher energy and environmental quality buildings makes the acquisition of excellence marks for products and materials, of which the building envelope is constituted, increasingly urgent. The recent European (EU) Commission Decision 2021/476 is applicable to marble used in construction. It sets out criteria that companies producing marble have to accomplish to obtain the EU Ecolabel brand. Unfortunately, some criteria such as, for example, those that refer to the application of the Environmental Management System, ISO 14001 and EMAS certifications, or those that concern the ISO 14067 as well as the Product Environment Footprint procedure, are difficult to apply for companies in the marble extraction and processing sector. These companies, in fact, are usually family-run and find it difficult to adhere to such complex schemes. This difficulty obviously limits the number of companies and products that can aspire to an environmental excellence label. On the other hand, the new Decision seems inadequate to identify the environmental impact of the transport of material between the different workstations of the same company; aspect that would be important to consider to evaluate in a broader and more detailed way this impact in the framework of the attribution of an environmental excellence label. To provide a contribution to overcome these difficulties for the companies and to open a debate on the criteria that lead to the assignment of the EU Ecolabel brand, here an alternative simplified method for the indirect assessment of pollutant emissions from the work chain of marble companies, which also includes the contribution of the transport phase of the semi-finished material between the different workstations of the company, is proposed. The method simply starts with an evaluation of the type and quantity of energy sources used in the work cycle and the emission factors of the main pollutants emitted. In this way, a sort of material impact sheet is obtained that contains not only the embodied energy of the marble but also the “embodied pollution” associated to it. The method, besides being easy to use, could be adopted in the criteria that lead to the attribution of the EU Ecolabel brand to companies that work marble.

Meteorology and long-term trends in air pollutant concentrations may obscure the results from short-term policies implemented to improve air quality. This study presents changes in CO, NO2, O3, SO2, PM10, and PM2.5 based on their anomalies during the COVID-19 partial (Phase 2) and total (Phase 3) lockdowns in Mexico City (MCMA). To minimise the impact of the air pollutant long-term trends, pollutant anomalies were calculated using as baseline truncated Fourier series, fitted with data from 2016 to 2019, and then compared with those from the lockdown. Additionally, days with stagnant conditions and heavy rain were excluded to reduce the impact of extreme weather changes. Satellite observations for NO2 and CO were used to contrast the ground-based derived results. During the lockdown Phase 2, only NO2 exhibited significant decreases (p < 0.05) of between 10 and 23% due to reductions in motor vehicle emissions. By contrast, O3 increased (p < 0.05) between 16 and 40% at the same sites where NO2 decreased. During Phase 3, significant decreases (p < 0.05) were observed for NO2 (43%), PM10 (20%), and PM2.5 (32%) in response to the total lockdown. Although O3 concentrations were lower in Phase 3 than during Phase 2, those did not decrease (p < 0.05) from the baseline at any site despite the total lockdown. SO2 decreased only during Phase 3 in a near-road environment. Satellite observations confirmed that NO2 decreased and CO stabilised during the total lockdown. Air pollutant changes during the lockdown could be overestimated between 2 and 10-fold without accounting for the influences of meteorology and long-term trends in pollutant concentrations. Air quality improved significantly during the lockdown driven by reduced NO2 and PM2.5 emissions despite increases in O3, resulting in health benefits for the MCMA population. A health assessment conducted suggested that around 588 deaths related to air pollution exposure were averted during the lockdown. Our results show that to reduce O3 within the MCMA, policies must focus on reducing VOCs emissions from non-mobile sources. The measures implemented during the COVID-19 lockdowns provide valuable information to reduce air pollution through a range of abatement strategies for emissions other than from motor vehicles.

The European network of regulatory air quality monitoring stations is now dense enough to explore long term terms.We combine the Airbase data base for the years 2000 to 2012 and AQ e-reporting after 2013. Trends are computed for SO2, NO2, O3, PM10 and PM2.5, including various metrics and indicators. Quantitative information if provided for the evolution of all these compounds and, when relevant, put in perspective with the trend in air pollutant emissions. We present an assessment of observed air quality trends in Europe aimed at making the most of the regulatory monitoring network to document and explain the effectiveness of air pollution mitigation policies. The focus is on the 2000-2017 time period and surface SO2, NO2, ozone, PM10 and PM2.5, for which we can rely on more than 10,000 stations. Data related to 3,500 stations complied with the requirements, in terms of completeness and representativeness for long-term trend assessments. Such long-term records are only available for countries of the European Union, with one exception for Norway. Substantial improvements are found for all air pollutants. We assess in detail the absolute and relative trends for a wide range of air pollutant indicators and also discuss the spatial variability of the trends as well as changes in monthly, weekly and hourly variability. These changes are put in perspective with emission reductions in Europe in order to point out the pollutants where a potential mismatch may occur between expected and observed improvements in air pollutant concentration. The relative change in SO2 concentrations lies in the 70 to 85% range. This reduction is lower but still in line with the reported emission decrease in Europe (-89%). There is however a slight mismatch between emissions and concentrations in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. Such a mismatch after 2008 also appears for NO2. But on the contrary to SO2, this mismatch has a more substantial impact on the overall trend as reduction in concentrations is 30% which is lower than expected given the 53% reduction in emission over the same time period. The magnitude of ozone peaks (as the fourth highest annual daily maximum of 8hr running mean) decreases by 10% and the number of days exceeding the long-term objective of daily maximum hourly ozone above 120µg/m3 is reduced by 30 to 50%. Annual ozone mean however increases, especially at urban sites. The increase is less pronounced at rural sites, suggesting that it is mainly related to lower NOx titration effect rather than hemispheric changes. Annual mean ozone increase also contributes to higher health exposure, with median SOMO35 and SOMO10 increasing by 1.3% and 13.4%, respectively at urban stations. This needs however to be considered with respect to the NO2 reduction in order to understand the net impact on health, for instance by looking at Ox (sum of NO2 and O3) which decreases. Particulate matter annual mean concentrations decrease by 25 to 45%, depending on station typology. The reductions are similar for PM10 and PM2.5 when comparing collocated measurements. The highest peaks of particulate matter exhibit less relative reduction than the average, showing that episodes of high PM would deserve more focus. PM concentrations decrease faster than primary PM emissions (-30% for primary PM10 and -18% for primary PM2.5), thanks to the additional impact of the reduction of precursors of secondary PM, such as SOx, NOx and NH3. The air quality index over Europe was computed for the whole time period. It gradually improves over the 2000-2017 time period. But most of the improvement concern days in the “moderate” air quality category, whereas the number of days classified as “poor” for air quality remain quite constant. This observation raises specific concern for future improvement of high air pollution episodes., OCP/EEA/ACC/18/001-ETC/ATNI

Air pollution has been recognized as a threat to human health since the time of Hippocrates, ca 400 BC. Successive written accounts of air pollution occur in different countries through the following two millennia until measurements, from the eighteenth century onwards, show the growing scale of poor air quality in urban centres and close to industry, and the chemical characteristics of the gases and particulate matter. The industrial revolution accelerated both the magnitude of emissions of the primary pollutants and the geographical spread of contributing countries as highly polluted cities became the defining issue, culminating with the great smog of London in 1952. Europe and North America dominated emissions and suffered the majority of adverse effects until the latter decades of the twentieth century, by which time the transboundary issues of acid rain, forest decline and ground-level ozone became the main environmental and political air quality issues. As controls on emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides (SO 2 and NO x ) began to take effect in Europe and North America, emissions in East and South Asia grew strongly and dominated global emissions by the early years of the twenty-first century. The effects of air quality on human health had also returned to the top of the priorities by 2000 as new epidemiological evidence emerged. By this time, extensive networks of surface measurements and satellite remote sensing provided global measurements of both primary and secondary pollutants. Global emissions of SO 2 and NO x peaked, respectively, in ca 1990 and 2018 and have since declined to 2020 as a result of widespread emission controls. By contrast, with a lack of actions to abate ammonia, global emissions have continued to grow. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Air quality, past present and future’.

Solid waste collection, transfer and transportation (SWCTT) is a fundamental component of solid waste management systems that contributes to both the costs and environmental emissions associated with managing solid waste. The objective of this study is to project the fuel consumption and fuel costs of SWCTT in Tehran from 2018 to 2032. A further objective is to evaluate the air pollutant emissions from fuel consumption of SWCTT vehicles. For these purposes Waste Guidance System (WAGS) and Energy and Environment software were applied. Results of the present study showed that more than 39 million dollars would be required during the next 15 years in the SWCTT sector to supply 366 million liters of diesel fuel. In the context of local air pollution impact, about 9902.8, 6161.7, 73.5, 2639.6, 8065.5 and 4839.2 of NOX, SO2, SO3, CO, CH and SPM will be anticipated to be emitted by SWCTT sector in Tehran during the studied period.

Air pollutants and CO2 emissions have a common important source, namely energy consumption. Considering fairness and efficiency, the provincial coordinated allocation of energy consumption, air pollutant emission, and carbon emission (EAC) quotas is of great significance to promote provincial development and achieve national energy conservation and emission reduction targets. A weighted environment zero-sum-gains data envelopment analysis (ZSG-DEA) model is constructed to optimize the efficiency of the initial provincial quotas under the fairness principle, so as to realize the fairness and efficiency of allocation. The empirical analysis in 2020 shows that the optimal allocation scheme proposed in this study is better than the national planning scheme in terms of fairness and efficiency, and the optimal scheme based on the initial allocation of priority order of “capacity to pay egalitarianism > historical egalitarianism > population egalitarianism” is the fairest. The optimal allocation scheme in 2025 can achieve absolute fairness. In this scheme, the pressures of energy conservation and emission reduction undertaken by different provinces vary greatly. The implementation of regional coordinated development strategies can narrow this gap and improve the enforceability of this scheme. Combined with the analysis of energy conservation and emission reduction in seven categories and three major national strategic regions, we put forward corresponding measures to provide decision support for China’s energy conservation and emission reduction.

The impact of vehicular traffic on society is huge and multifaceted, including economic, social, health and environmental aspects. The problems is complex and hard to model since it requires to consider traffic patterns, air pollutant emissions, and the chemical reactions and dynamics of pollutants in the low atmosphere. This paper aims at exploring a comprehensive simulation tool ranging from vehicular traffic all the way to environmental impact. As first step in this direction, we couple a traffic second-order model, tuned on NGSIM data, with an nitrogen oxides (NO) emission model and a set of equations for some of the main chemical reactions behind ozone (O) production.

On December 31, 2019, the Chinese authorities reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) the outbreak of a new strain of coronavirus that causes a serious disease in the city of Wuhan, China. This outbreak was classified as SARS-CoV2 and is the cause of the COVID-19 disease. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declares it a Pandemic and today it is considered the greatest challenge in global health that humanity has faced since World War II and it is estimated that between 40 and 60% of the population worldwide will catch the virus. This has caused enormous challenges in countries around the world in social, economic, environmental and obviously health issues. These challenges are mainly due to the effects of the established quarantines in almost all capitals and major cities around the world, from Asia, Europe to America. However, these lockdown which began worldwide from January 23, have had a significant impact on the environment and on the air quality of cities as recently reported by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and ESA (European Space Agency), with reductions according to them of up to 30% in some of the epicenters such as the case of Wuhan. Knowing that air pollution causes approximately 29% of lung cancer deaths, 43% of COPD deaths, and 25% of ischemic heart disease deaths, it is important to know the effects of quarantines in cities regarding air quality to take measures that favor populations and urban ecosystems when the emergency ends. Therefore, this paper describes the behavior of PM2.5 emissions particulate matter from the 50 most polluted capital cities in the world according to the WHO, measured before-after the start of the quarantine. Likewise, the impact at the local and global level of this emissions behavior, which averaged 12% of PM2.5 decrease in these cities., Graphical abstract Image 1, Highlights • 12% reduction in the 50 most contaminated capitals during the lockdown by COVID-19. • Dhaka, Kampala and Delhi had a PM2.5 reduction of 14%, 35% and 40%. • The greatest PM2.5 reduction within the data collected is Bogotá, Colombia with 57%. • Kubait City, presents the second largest reduction of PM2.5 (42%). • The greatest PM2.5 reductions occurred in the capitals of America, Asia and Africa., Main finding: 12% of PM2.5 reduction in the 50 most contaminated capitals cities of the world during the lockdown by COVID-19 and a the greatest PM2.5 reduction in a capital city was 57%.

Environmental pollution and the associated societal health issues have attracted recent research attention. While most research has focused on the effect of air pollution on human health and local economies, few articles have discussed the environment, health, and economic development in in an integrated analysis. This paper used a Dynamic Network SBM Model to evaluate production and health efficiencies in Chinese cities and found that the production efficiency scores were slightly higher than the health efficiency scores, with the two-stage efficiency scores in most cities having significant fluctuations. Labor, fixed assets, energy, GDP, and lung disease and mortality reduction efficiencies in the first stage were generally high, however, the medical input efficiencies in the second stage were low, indicating that there was there significant room for improvement in many cities.

We decompose factors affecting China’s energy-related air pollutant (NOx, PM2.5, and SO2) emission changes into different effects using structural decomposition analysis (SDA). We find that, from 2005 to 2012, investment increased NOx, PM2.5, and SO2 emissions by 14.04, 7.82 and 15.59 Mt respectively, and consumption increased these emissions by 11.09, 7.98, and 12.09 Mt respectively. Export and import slightly increased the emissions on the whole, but the rate of the increase has slowed down, possibly reflecting the shift in China’s foreign trade structure. Energy intensity largely reduced NOx, PM2.5, and SO2 emissions by 12.49, 14.33 and 23.06 Mt respectively, followed by emission efficiency that reduces these emissions by 4.57, 9.08, and 17.25 Mt respectively. Input-output efficiency slightly reduces the emissions. At sectoral and sub-sectoral levels, consumption is a great driving factor in agriculture and commerce, whereas investment is a great driving factor in transport, construction, and some industrial subsectors such as iron and steel, nonferrous metals, building materials, coking, and power and heating supply. Energy intensity increases emissions in transport, chemical products and manufacturing, but decreases emissions in all other sectors and subsectors. Some policies arising from our study results are discussed.

In order to reduce the environmental impact of aircraft operation in the terminal area, this paper researched the route optimization method. Firstly, this paper constructed the air pollutant emission and noise assessment model, and the flight performance model. Secondly, aiming at reducing air emissions and noise level, the multi-objective terminal area route optimization model is established based on the principles of flight safety and flight procedure construction. Then this paper puts forward the path optimization method of emission and noise reduction of terminal area route network, through the research on the priority setting method of terminal area approach and departure route planning. The route segmentation method and NSGA-II algorithm are employed to solve the problem. Finally, a numerical case study is carried out for the Shanghai terminal area, and yields the following results: (1) Compared with the original route network, the optimized route network in the terminal area can significantly reduce emission and noise by reducing pollutant emission by 51.4% and noise influence by 21.5%, (2) The method can also reduce fuel consumption by 60.5% and the total route length by 21.1%.

Due to the relevance of fossil fuels in the electricity matrix in Spain, the electrical sector plays a crucial role in mitigation policies such as carbon taxes. Increased prices of electricity can act as an incentive to enhance energy efficiency contributing to CO2 abatement. This paper evaluates a tax on electricity consumption (ECT). Focusing on energy efficiency commitments for Spain as established by EU Authorities for Horizon 2020 (H2020), a pricing model was created to assess economic impacts and its effectiveness in meeting this commitment. The analysis was performed by considering two scenarios, without (Scenario 1) and with (Scenario 2) tax recycling between the new tax and employer-paid social security benefits or contributing to price stability. In Scenario 2, the tax reform is achieved with tax recycling, offsetting the introduction of the ECT by reducing employer-paid social security payments. Two alternative restrictions on the tax reform were considered for the simulation of Scenario 2. In the first case, a restriction was imposed to ensure revenue neutrality (2-I). In the second case, the restriction ought to maintain price stability (2-II). Results from different scenarios offer an important range of possibilities for policy decisions. The results show that with a tax rate equal to 1%, there is a remarkable reduction of CO2 emissions from the electricity sector, and the same happens with other sectors that the literature identifies as drivers of such emissions. Junta de Andalucía proyecto SEJ-132 Fundación Roger Torné, Universidad de Sevilla, Cátedra de Economía de la Energía y del Medio Ambiente 1394/0103 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad ECO2014 – 56399-R Ministerio de Educación de Chile Proyecto FONDECYT 1150025

In EU, a significant percentage of urban population is exposed to pollutant concentrations above limit/target values stated by air quality legislation. In Italy, this percentage is even higher: 71% for PM 10 (daily limit value), 58% for O 3 (target value), and 45% for NO 2 (annual limit value). In this paper a 20-year (1993–2012) air quality analysis in the city of Florence (Italy) is reported based on observations from all stations of urban air quality monitoring network. Main atmospheric pollutants have been examined: SO 2 , CO, NO, NO 2 , PM 10 , and O 3 . Actually, Florence is affected by serious air quality problems, with NO 2 , O 3 and PM 10 limit values regularly exceeded in recent years. Trends of annual pollutant concentrations have been analysed to assess the significance of their long-term pattern. Trends of inventory emission data have been related to concentrations through a linear regressive framework to assess the capability of each emission category to control annual concentration trends. As a result, primary pollutants exhibited a significant decrease, while this was poorly significant for secondary species despite remarkable reduction in their precursors emissions. A major role is played by meteorological conditions strongly unfavourable to pollutant dispersion, along with vehicle fleet increase and variation over the years.

A model initially developed for forecasts of air pollutant emissions from motor vehicles is presented, with special emphasis on its vehicle dynamics module. Vehicle density forecasts are performed separately for passenger cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles. Combined with estimates of vehicle usage parameters they are used to predict the total traffic volume up to the year 2010. The internal turnover of the vehicle fleet is simulated with a modified Weibull function, and the technology substitution process is determined nonanalytically. Although more refined approaches have been developed for the prediction of the dynamic behavior of car populations, the one presented here has been designed in such a way that it can be applied to countries where detailed information is lacking or too difficult to find, and even nonexperts can implement it reasonably well.

This report describes the methodology used in the ARTEMIS rail emissions model. The approached used is a matrix of operating conditions, speeds and accelerations, for which basic parameters are used to calculated the resistance to motion of trains. Four types of resistance are included: rolling, aerodynamic, gravitational and acceleration. A necessary element in the calculation is the driving pattern, that is, the distribution of speeds and accelerations for typical operation.In the report, data are analyzed to provide operation condition distributions on both a spatial and temporal basis. The calculation procedure is evaluated with respect to resolution of operation conditions, and then evaluated by comparison with experimental data for a variety of passenger and goods trains. The results indicate that the energy consumption from modeling approach is valid to better that 10% for known operating characteristics. Emissions are calculated from the energy consumption using average fuel based emissions factors and electrical production emissions factors.