1. Long-term reductions in costs of controlling regional air pollution in Europe due to climate policy.
- Author
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van Harmelen, Toon, Bakker, Joost, de Vries, Bert, van Vuuren, Detlef, den Elzen, Michel, and Mayerhofer, Petra
- Subjects
CLIMATE change ,AIR pollution ,EMISSION control - Abstract
This paper examines to what extent climate change policies will alter the effectiveness of agreed-upon or future policies to reduce regional air pollution in Europe and vice versa. And when is it cost-effective to combat regional air pollution with clean technology instead of add-on technology?For this exercise, several extensions were made to the energy model TIMER, to introduce add-on abatement technologies, specified in terms of costs and reduction potentials, in order to be able to calculate cost-effective emission reduction strategies for different scenarios and regions.The results show that add-on technologies to reduce regional air pollution remain necessary throughout the century. The costs to reach the NO
x emission reduction targets in Europe are about three times as high as for SO2 . Mitigation costs averaged over the century by add-on technologies can be reduced by climate measures by 50–70% for SO2 and around 50% for NOx . The costs of SO2 and NOx mitigation by add-on technology in a world without climate policy are comparable or in some periods even higher than the costs of an integrated mitigation of SO2 , NOx and CO2 emissions if a reduction of specific costs by learning is, in contrast with energy technologies, not assumed for abatement technologies. So, the costs of SO2 and NOx add-on measures avoided by climate policies can outweigh the costs of these climate measures. The total annual costs are in the order of 1 or 2% of the present GDP, depending on the scenario. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]- Published
- 2002
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