AQMRC (in consortium with partners Triple E Consulting, TNO, TML, DTU ME-SYS and DCE) has been awarded a major contract (4 million Euro) by the European Commission’s DG Environment. Over the next 4 years, the consortium will evaluate, implement and further develop Europe’s air quality policies.
European air pollution policy has a long history, with the most recent policy round having been launched in 2005 with the Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution. The strategy’s goals of achieving “levels of air quality that do not result in unacceptable impacts on, and risks to, human health and the environment” had already been part of the Sixth Environment Action Programme and are now also embedded in the Proposal for a new EU Environment Action Programme to 2020 (7th EAP). The main objective of this Framework Agreement is to support the European Commission’s DG Environment in the evaluation, implementation and further development of air quality policies. Specifically, the support provided within the context of this Framework Agreement is articulated to:
1. Improve air policy management - aims at developing improved strategies for the EU air quality legislation. This necessarily includes the improvement of legal provisions, monitoring, reporting, assessment and management at the different levels of governance.
2. Project air pollution and air quality - aims to update and improve the current reference projections for a number of key sectors to better understand policy impacts and to compare different strategies. This objective requires expertise and know-how on state-of-the-art models and well established methodologies. Developing reference projections for energy, transport, agriculture, sectoral policies and carrying out impact assessments of different strategies demands a high level of confidence in dealing with state-of-the-art models.
3. Assess additional EU measures - consists of assessing from a technical point of view (especially with regard to costs, benefits and feasibility) the possible measures for further air emission reduction at the EU level.
4. Assess local measures - in line with Objective 3, this objective aims at assessing from a technical point of view (especially with regard to costs, benefits and feasibility) the possible measures for air pollution reduction at a local level.
5. Support evaluation and further development of air policy - includes the assessment of current legislation with regard to the outstanding issues not covered by the previous review on air quality legislation.
