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| Scientists' Contributions | ||
CLEAN AIR FOR EUROPE - CAFÉ
Based on www.europa.eu.int/comm/environment/air/cafe/index.htm and a paper of Peter Wicks (European Commission DG Environment, Unit "Air and Noise", Bruxelles, Belgium) EUROTRAC newsletter 23/2001
Clean Air for Europe (CAFE) is a programme of technical analysis and policy development which will lead to the adoption of a thematic strategy on air pollution under the Sixth Environmental Action Programme in 2004. The major elements of the CAFE programme are outlined in the Communication on CAFE (COM(2001)245)). The programme was launched in March 2001. Its aim is to develop a long-term, strategic and integrated policy advice to protect against significant negative effects of air pollution on human health and the environment. The integrated policy advice from the CAFE programme is planned to be ready by the end of 2004 or beginning of 2005. The European Commission will present its thematic strategy on air pollution during the first half year of 2005, outlining the environmental objectives for air quality and measures to be taken to achieve these objectives.
Air Pollution: The Policy Response So Far
On 4 May 2001 the Commission announced the launch of a new programme of technical analysis and policy development in the field of air quality: the Clean Air for Europe (CAFE) programme [1].
CAFE builds upon a long and successful history of policies and measures to reduce air pollution. Air quality has improved dramatically during the last few decades as a result of this policy. This improvement is set to continue into the future as measures adopted during the last few years take increasing effect.
The policy that has led to this improvement has involved a number of different strands.
- Firstly, ambient air quality standards have been set within the framework of the Air Quality Framework Directive adopted in 1996 [2], This Directive requires Member States to set up and maintain a system for assessing air quality, identifying areas where limit values are likely to be exceeded, and drawing up action plans to reduce the risk of exceedances. Following ils adoption, new limit values for the following pollutants have been adopted: SO2, NOx, particutate matter and lead in 1999 [3]; carbon monoxide (CO) and benzene in 2000 [4], ozone in ambient air [5], Finally, discussions are ongoing concerning the desirability of adopting similar legislation to cover remaining pollutants such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), nickel, cadmium, arsenic and mercury.
- The second strand involves the setting of national emission ceilings to tackle trans-boundary air pollution problems. At the Community level, a "national emission ceilings" (NEC) directive was adopted in 2001 following successful outcome of negotiations between the Council and Parliament [6]. Ceilings have also been set in a series of Protocols under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE) Convention on Long-Range Trans-boundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP), culminating in the 1999 Gothenburg Protocol.
- Finally, several measures have been taken to reduce emission from specific source categories. Of these, the sector that has received most attention is road transport. The two Auto-Oil programmes have, between them, led to a series of directives regulating vehicle emissions fuel quality of petrol and diesel. As a result, emissions from road transport of many of the main regulated pollutants are expected to fall to less than 20% of their 1995 levels by 2020, in spite of the forecast growth in transport demand. Emission limit values also exist for other source categories such as large combustion plants and waste incinerators, while instruments such as ihe IPPC Directive [7] can be expected to lead to further improvements, even though they are difficult to quantify.
The Main Remaining Challenges
Among the remaining problems that CAFE will have to solve, the CAFE Communication highlights particulate matter (PM) and ozone as headline priorities. Both pollutants have adverse effects on human health. In the case of PM there appears to be no concentration below which it has no effects on human health. Ozone also attacks vegetation and on the basis of currently known technology it is not possible to respect the World Health Organisation (WHO)'s guideline of 120 ug/m3 (eight-hour average) at all times, nor is it possible to predict when it might be respected in the future. There are many uncertainties and complexities relating in the case of PM to the mechanism of damage and the types of particles that are of most concern, and for both pollutants to the formation and transport of particulates. A large amount of technical work is therefore necessary before public health in relation to these pollutants can be guaranteed.
However, CAFE will also need to address other problems. It is becoming increasingly clear that some Member States expect to have difficulty achieving the existing ambient limit values for some pollutants - especially nitrogen dioxide - in hot-spot areas. There are also many problems relating to deposition of atmospheric pollutants to water, soil and buildings. In addition to the well-known problems of acidification and eutrophica-tion, a wide range of pollutants (heavy metals, POPs such as dioxins and furans, pesticides) arrive in our environment (including the human food chain) primarily via the air.
The Need for an Integrated Strategy
In order to address these remaining challenges effectively - and that also means cost-effectively - it is clearly desirable to tackle them in the context of an integrated programme. The idea of such a programme was first mooted in 1998 when the Commission's Directorate-General for the Environment ("DG Environment") circulated a discussion paper to a wide range of stakeholders. The programme that was launched in May is thus the outcome of two and a half years of discussion and deliberation, including a feasibility study performed by consultants ERM and TNO [8].
During this time, DG Environment was also preparing the Commission's Proposal for a Sixth Environmental Action Programme (6EAP), the programme that will define the European Union's environment policy up to 2010 and into which programmes such as CAFE will need to fit [9].
In view of this, the Commission has announced its intention to present a thematic strategy for air quality in 2004. The strategy will contain:
- an in-depth review of the adequacy and effectiveness of existing Community legislation and national programmes in addressing the remaining air pollution problems, including the revision or completion of air quality and deposition objectives where necessary;
- detailed description of and reference to available air quality and deposition data and indicators for public information;
- the results of a detailed analysis on what further measures may be required in order to achieve air quality and deposition objectives;
- proposals concerning new or revised directives on air quality and national emission ceilings;
- a status report on relevant policy in related areas, including the further development of the measures to reduce emissions from specific source categories.
CAFE has the following specific objectives:
- to develop, collect and validate scientific information relating to the effects of outdoor air pollution, emission inventories, air quality assessment, emission and air quality projections, cost-effectiveness studies and integrated assessment modeling, leading to the development and updating of air quality and deposition objectives and indicators and identification of the measures required to reduce emissions;
- to support the implementation and review the effectiveness of existing legislation, in particular the air quality daughter directives, the decision on exchange of information, and national emission ceilings as set out in recent legislation, to contribute to the review of international protocols, and to develop new proposals as and when necessary;
- to ensure that the sectoral measures that will be needed to achieve air quality and deposition objectives cost-effectively are taken at the relevant level through the development of effective structural links with sectoral policies;
- to determine an overall, integrated strategy at regular intervals which defines appropriate air quality objectives for the future and cost-effective measures for meeting those objectives;
- to disseminate widely the technical and policy information arising from implementation of the programme.
Organisational Structure
CAFE benefits from an organisational structure ensuring that the policy is science-based and involves stakeholders at all levels of policy-making. CAFE is developed under the leadership of a permanent secretariat housed within the Commission Environment DG . The secretariat is assisted in this task by an inter-service group composed of all relevant Commission departments. The mandate of this group, chaired by Environment DG, is to foster strategic discussion and consensus between the services and ensure that Commission policy in this area is fully co-ordinated.
A steering group composed of representatives of the Member States, the European Parliament, stakeholders and relevant international organisations meets two or three times a year to advise the Commission on the strategic direction of the programme. A technical analysis group co-ordinates the technical analysis work carried out within CAFE. It comprises the leaders or representatives of projects carried out within key organisations at European or international level. A sectoral co-ordination group will be set up with the objective of ensuring full communication between CAFE and sectoral policies including the development of source-based measures. Finally, two types of working groups are envisaged. Structural working groups, typically specialist thematic working groups, will be set up on a quasi-permanent basis and will have the task of gathering and evaluating research and technical analysis in order to feed into the development of the overall strategy and detailed policy. Ad hoc working groups will be set up as and when necessary for a limited duration to address specific tasks and policy measures.
At the moment, three working groups have been created:
- Working Group on Target Setting and Policy Assessment
- Working Group on Particulate Matter
- Working Group on Implementation
CAFE Tasks
Some concrete tasks for CAFE are emerging from efforts to draw up a detailed work-plan.
- One of the tasks, clearly related to the first of CAFE's objectives, is to review the current state of evidence on the effects of air pollution, including interrelationships between pollutants. This needs to be an ongoing activity, helping us to review priorities for air quality policy, set objectives and assess the benefits of reducing emissions. It is hoped that the World Health Organisation (WHO) will update its air quality guidelines, since this will form a vital contribution to this review. A wide range of other technical inputs can be expected. A list of such inputs is currently being drawn up, with a view to assessing where the major gaps are likely to be in order to direct available funding to those areas. Having gathered together the "raw evidence", it will be necessary to gather together experts who are able to interpret this evidence. Both peer review and stakeholder review will play an important role.
- Another task - related to the second objective - will be to review the progress being made in implementing relevant directives, in particular the first and second daughter directives and the NEC and ozone directives. Apart from the obvious need to ensure that adopted legislation is being properly implemented, this review will also help identify any need to adapt the legislation in response to implementation difficulties.
- A third task for CAFE will be to set clear, achievable, time-limited objectives for the improvement of air quality between now and 2020. A crucial element in this task will be to agree on a list of indicators that can be used to set objectives. Currently, the indicators used relate to ambient concentrations of pollutants (used to set limit values in the daughter directives), gap closure and AOT concepts for national emission ceilings (acidification and ozone). It will be necessary to discuss in detail how this list of indicators needs to evolve in the future: for example, whether indicators for eutrophication could be added, or which indicator should be used for paniculate matter.
Not only should objectives be clear and achievable, they should also in principle be chosen so as to ensure that they correspond to the maximum possible net benefits. In economic jargon, objectives should be set at the level of ambition where marginal cost of further improvements has risen to match the marginal benefits. Some of the difficulties involved in taking a "cost-benefit" to objective-setting are discussed below, but in any case it would seem necessary to identify alternative sets of objectives with varying levels of ambition for 2010, 2015 and 2020, in order to have some flexibility in assessing the most appropriate level of ambition for the set of objectives finally chosen. Of course, only objectives going beyond the situation already guaranteed by adopted legislation will be considered.
In order to assess both the achievability of and the costs and benefits associated with the different objectives, it will be necessary to construct scenarios for the evolution of emissions and air quality between now and 2020. The foundation will be a "base-case" scenario to assess what will happen simply on the basis of existing legislation at Community and national legislation. In other words, we aim to develop a clear picture of what can be expected to be achieved without any measures being taken beyond those already agreed or implied by the acceptance of limit values and national emission targets.
Having developed this base case, it will then be possible to see what the possibilities are for improving on it. To do this, a wide range of further potential measures - both technical and non-technical, relating to all relevant source categories - will be analysed to see how effective they would be in reducing emissions, how much benefit (in terms of reductions in air pollution and its effects) would accrue from these reductions, how much they would cost, and what ancillary (i.e. side-) benefits or disbenefits would also occur. Scenarios could be optimised to find the most cost-effective package for meeting the alternative sets of objectives identified earlier.
This scenario development can also be used to examine the effectiveness of already adopted legislation in bringing real benefit, by varying the scenario to see what would have happened if the legislation had not been adopted. Of course, the choice of exactly what to exclude in this "hypothetical" scenario will be fraught with difficulties, but if done carefully this will provide valuable information for the review foreseen in the second objective.
By assessing the costs and benefits of the different scenarios, it should be possible to make rational decisions about which objectives are actually the right ones to adopt. Of course, this cannot be an automatic process. Uncertainties in the assessment - on both the cost and benefit side - are likely to be considerable. The effect of structural changes in the economy or evolving technology will be particularly difficult to predict and quantify. Similarly, many of the "real" benefits of improving air quality are essentially intangible and unquantifiable. Although methodologies for quantifying and even monetising benefits are constantly evolving, much of the information concerning benefits is likely to come in non-monetised form. This will mean that no mathematical calculation can determine which is the "right" set of objectives in terms of maximising the net benefits. Nevertheless, by bringing all the available information together in a systematic way, we have the best chance to make rational proposals and to be able to explain the choices made in a convincing way.
Another advantage of such a systematic approach to scenario development will be that the assumptions used to determine the costs and benefits of achieving different objectives can be translated directly into a clear description of the measures that will be needed to achieve them cost-effectively, as well as corresponding national emission targets. Through regular meetings of the CAFE groups - especially the co-ordination group - it will be possible to report on the main sectoral and source-based measures under development, and also to stimulate this development by providing clear information about the costs and benefits. By following this approach we hope it will be possible to deliver the required elements for a cost-effective and comprehensive thematic strategy in 2004.
Some specific challenges
In order to ensure that the flow of technical knowledge and data is optimised, reporting requirements need to be streamlined and rationalised. The emphasis on scenario development and optimisation of cost-effective packages will place demands on the further development of integrated assessment modelling. The consistency of assessments and modelling interface across different geographical scales improved. The air quality assessment reports to be provided by Member States in the framework of the air quality legislation will need to be examined and compared with Europe-wide assessments. The credibility and comparability of critical loads need to be further assessed. Ozone modelling in the Mediterranean area needs to be improved. The effects of ozone on crops and vegetation as well as other (non-health) effects of air pollution need to be better understood. Information regarding the cost of abatement needs to be constantly updated in the light of evolving technology, and finally the collection and storing of information in databases needs to be integrated and upgraded.
The technical work carried out within CAFE will also contribute to the review of international protocols, notably Gothenburg, and it will need to be closely co-ordinated with CLRTAP's technical programmes. Improved co-ordination at the negotiating level will also be mutually beneficial, and in particular it will be essential to ensure that the negotiating positions taken by Member States in Geneva are consistent with evolving Community policy in the area. In any case, with the enlargement of the European Union looming ever nearer it is clear that the scope of the technical and policy work within CAFE will need to cover the accession candidate countries as well as existing Member States.
Throughout this process of technical analysis and policy development, it will be necessary to maintain a continuous flow of information to the public, through channels such as the Internet, press policy and other forms of publicity, and by providing easy access to well-organised and understandable databases. The process will be fully transparent, including the rapid and open minuting of meetings. A real effort will be made to ensure that all relevant stakeholders are given ample opportunity to get involved at both the technical and decision-making levels. Technical contributions from stakeholders will be particularly welcomed.
Activities in the CAFE Programme
In order to make available the scientific and technical knowledge required to meet the objectives of the CAFE programme, the Commission has undertaken, and is planning to undertake, several contracts.
Main contracts:
- Development of a Baseline Scenario and an Integrated Assessment Model
- Further development and application of the TREMOVE transport model
- Cost-Benefit Analysis of the CAFE Programme
- Review Health effects by WHO
- Assessment of the Effectiveness of European Air Quality Policies and Measures
- "Ex-post" Evaluation of Short-term and Local Measures in the CAFE Context
In addition, more contracts in support of CAFE may be launched.
Other ongoing activities:
- Co-operation with international institutions dealing with air quality: CLRTAP: Review effects on environment: Co-operation with CLRTAP
- Ad-hoc working group on implementation and on particulates:
- Working Group on Implementation
- Working Group on Target Setting and Assessment
- Assess in depth particulate matters: Working Group on Particulate Matters
- Urban scale
- The CAFE secretariat is finalising the terms of reference of the review of the RAINS model and publish an open call for tender in July 2003, and also upload the terms of reference to this web-site.
- European Research and the CAFE Programme
CAFE Reference Documents
Relevant documents produced by the Commission in the Framework of the CAFE Programme:
- 6th Environment Action Programme
- Communication "The Clean Air for Europe (CAFE) Programme: Towards a Thematic Strategy for Air Quality" COM(2001)245
- WHO - Air Quality Guidelines for Europe
- Terms of reference for the Particulate Matter (PM) Working Group
- Terms of reference of the Working Group on Target Setting and Policy Assessment
Air related brochures and publications.
- Clean air for Europe's cities. The ambient air quality framework directive.
- Cost-effective control of acidification and ground-level ozone.
- Economic evaluation of air quality targets for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, fine and suspended particulate matter and lead, Final report, October 1997
- Economic evaluation of air quality targets for tropospheric ozone
- Economic evaluation of air quality targets frocarbon monoxide and benzene
- EU Focus on clean air
- Exchange of information on air quality
- Fiscal Measures to Reduce CO2 Emissions from New Passenger Cars
- Ozone position paper
- Tropospheric ozone in the European Union: The consolidated report.
- Others
- DG Environment on-line publications catalogue
- Environment 2010: Our future, our choice - The sixth EU environment action programme
- Environment for Europeans
- Handbook for Implementation of EU Environmental Legislation - Air Quality
Air Quality and CAFE Home page
http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/air/sitemap.htm
References
[1] Commission Communication COM(2001)245 "The Clean Air for Europe (CAFE) Programme: Towards a Thematic Strategy for Air Quality".
[2] Council Directive 96/62/EC on ambient air quality assessment and management
[3] Council Directive 1999/30/EC; OJ No. L/63, 29.6.1999, p41
[4] Directive 2000/69/EC;OJ No. L/313, 13.12.2000, p12
[5] Directive 2002/3/EC relating to ozone in ambient air.
[6] Directive 2001/81/EC on national emissions ceilings for certain atmospheric pollutants.
[7] Council Directive 96/61/EC on integrated pollution prevention and control
[8] Clean Air for Europe: Feasibility Study, Final Report to the European Commission, December 2000, Environmental Resources Management
[9] COM (2001) 31, 24.1.2001
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