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Products and Services

Climate Change Mitigation

• The ETC/ACM supports EEA and the European Community as party to UNFCCC by compiling the annual EU greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory based on Members States' data. The ETC/ACM supports EEA Member Countries and Cooperating Countries in preparing their inventories and encourages harmonization of inventories by means of annual review. It maintains a database on GHG emissions in the EEA Member Countries according to the UNFCCC format.
  The ETC/ACM produces annually a detailed Technical Report for assessing actual progress of Member States towards their Kyoto target and the Europe 2020 strategy targets. Actual progress means that the ETC/ACM also prepares a proxy for the greenhouse gas emissions in the year (x-1), taking into account for instance recent energy statistics and emission trading information.

• Besides, ETC/ACM assesses Member States’ reporting on Policies and Measures and Projections (including quality control and a synthesis of Policies and Measures information and Projections reported by Member States).

• ETC/ACM is furthermore involved in investigating alternative methodologies for greenhouse gas emissions allocation; for instance different methodologies that are linked to a “carbon footprinting” approach. These methodologies may help, for example, in considering the effects of domestic energy demand on the emissions controlled by the Effort Sharing Directive and the ETS system.

• Support to EU policy; ETC/ACM staff supports various working groups of the EU Climate Change Committee, inter alia, the implementation of the EU CO2 Emissions Trading System and the Implementing Provisions of the Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Mechanism.

• ETC/ACM also supports EEA in assessment studies related to maritime transport and international aviation. Besides, ETC/ACM provides policy support related to maritime transport and international aviation (monitoring of emissions and support of emission inventory calculations by Member States).

• A new ETC/ACM activity is the support of EEA in data flow activities related to Ozone depletion Substances (ODS) and Fluorinated gases (F-gases).

• An area of interest for the ETC/ACM is the inter linkage of climate change and air pollution mitigation policies. This includes (based on a modeling/scenario approach) an analysis of climate aspects of air pollution mitigation and vice versa. The results of these analyses help in assessing to what extent additional air pollution policies and greenhous gas control measures would be necessary to reach acceptable impact levels of air pollutants and greenhouse gases.

Air pollution

• Follow-up comprehensive assessments of the European air pollution situation have been published, focusing on ecosystem and health impacts and including information on the effectiveness of past European policies. Additionally specific reports focusing on problematic pollutants and specific subjects are prepared, for example, the relationship between air quality and urban health.

• Development and maintenance of a policy-relevant core set of air pollution indicators following the DPSIR approach. This includes the collection of relevant air quality and air emission data and the communication of the results with the various stakeholders. Information on the indicators is published on the EEA website in the form of fact sheets and reports.

• EU inventory to the UNECE Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP); the ETC/ACM supports the European Community as party to LRTAP by compiling the annual EU emission inventory based on Members States data, and maintain a database with air pollutant emissions of the EEA Member Countries. In collaboration with the UNECE Centre on Emission Inventories and Projections (CEIP), the ETC/ACM prepares an annual evaluation of the EU Member States data submissions.

• Support to the EC current and new Air Quality Directives and Exchange of Information (EoI) Decision. This includes an annual report on national summer ozone exceedance episodes, on the air quality questionnaire and on EoI information. The EU Member States have a mandatory reporting obligation for this information under the Air Quality Directives. The ETC/ACM will help EEA assessing relevant knowledge (and gaps in knowledge), enabling the review of the Air Quality Directive in the upcoming years.

• Besides, the topic centre is involved in further elaborating the Implementing Provisions of the Air Quality Directive 2008/50/EC on basis of the experience gained in the former ETC/ACC on data flows, data quality and streamlining of reporting. This support will focus on the introduction of e-reporting by Member States at the various air pollution data reporting flows. It will also take into account other European (reporting) requirements like INSPIRE and GMES.

• AirBase and Model Documentation System (MDS); the ETC/ACM maintains the air quality information system and air quality MDS. The AirBase database contains the EoI data including the meta information of all AQ dataflows. MDS is part of the Forum for Air Quality Modelling (FAIRMODE) support provided by the ETC/ACM. FAIRMODE aims at responding to requirements of the Air Quality Directive 2008/50/EC and focuses on the introduction of modelling as a necessary tool for air quality assessments and management.

• In support to the European Thematic Strategy on air pollution, the ETC/ACM:
  
  • provides the european Commission with information from the air emissions and air quality inventories;
  • is developing high resolution spatial interpolated air quality methodology for European-wide mapping and exposure assessments;
  • contributes to integrated assessments for climate change and air pollution in order to assess ancillary benefits of integrated policies.

• The ETC/ACM participates in the organisation of annual workshops on air quality and air emissions for the EIONET system. The emissions workshop is organized jointly with the UNECE CLRTAP task Force on Emissions Inventories and Projections (TFEIP).

• The ETC/ACM maintains the near-real time (NRT) air quality data system. The work on near real-time data takes place in the context of EEA’s coordination role in GMES in-situ coordination and SEIS. Ozone, PM₁₀ and NO₂ are components subject of this near real time dataflow.

Integrated assessment and information services

• The ETC/ACM supports the EEA in the area of broader, integrated assessment activities. The ETC/ACM started in 2011 assessing the climate change and air pollution interlinkages. We continue this activity with the main aim to support the evaluation of the EU roadmap 2050 and other low carbon scenario’s and their effect on changes in atmospheric composition in the period 2010–2050; in particular the interlinkages between greenhouse gases and air pollutants. These interlinkages are also assessed in relation to international aviation and maritime transport.

• Information dissemination is another type of product delivered by the ETC/ACM. Information systems on air emissions and air quality are accessible for the public using web based internet facilities on the EEA web site. The ETC/ACM contributes to the contents of these EEA web services, aiming at making (local) environmental information easily available to Europe's citizens and the more informed public. It co-operates with other data generating organizations as established under the UN Conventions and EU institutions like EUROSTAT and JRC. The ETC/ACM assists EEA Member Countries in the use of available monitoring and reporting methodologies and tools. By doing so, it contributes to a process of optimizing monitoring systems with respect to policy support and policy evaluation. Furthermore, the ETC/ACM supports the development of air quality and air pollutant and GHG emissions reporting in countries that may become EU Candidate Countries (West-Balkan countries, Turkey).

• More specific and intermediate results of inventories, assessments and a diversity of studies performed by the ETC/ACM are published at this web site as (ETC/ACM Technical papers) (formerly the ETC/ACC Technical Papers), which have not been subject to a formal European Environment Agency (EEA) or member country review. As such, they do not necessarily represent the views of the EEA. These technical papers are published on this web site only.