On Wednesday 11th December 2013, Tim will be giving a presentation in Newcastle on "Working at the Interface of Air Quality, Climate Change, Public Health and Energy – Issues and Opportunities"
At the present time the future of air quality policy is looking increasingly uncertain. For much of the last decade and a half the UK government had convinced itself that the problem would be resolved by now through technological measures. However, following widespread exceedences of the EU limit values for NO2 and PM10 the government seems more interested in weakening the European legislation, or pulling out of the EU altogether, than in making the changes that would be necessary to tackle our air pollution problems. It is clear that the single issue approach to air pollution taken to date has led to a primary focus on tightening vehicle emission standards, and that this has failed. To develop a new approach to addressing air pollution will require dealing with our transport system – the main source of our existing air pollution problems. Fortunately, air quality is not the only problem associated with transport, but to develop and implement the radical solutions necessary to deal with the various problems will require significant collaboration over policy and scientific boundaries in respect of air pollution, climate change, public health and energy. This presentation will cover work from Tim’s current EPSRC/Energy Programme funded projects Disruption (www.disruptionproject.net) and MOT (Motoring and vehicle Ownership Trends in the UK www.tinyurl.com/MOTproject) as well as wider work on co-management of air quality and other issues undertaken by AQMRC@UWE.
