Meeting air pollution reduction targets cost-effectively across Portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Carvalho, Ana Rita Sousa
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/29703
• topic: Air pollution; Emssion reduction scenarios; 2030 targets; Environmental economy; Cost-efficiency; Cost-effectiveness

The topic of emission reduction has been a big concern in Europe as, although the emissions of pollutants have been decreasing, air pollution remains a problem. The present work aims to bridge the existing gap on the literature, finding spatially distributed solutions that achieve the emissions targets imposed by the National Emission Ceilings Directive (NEC) for 2030, using Portugal as a case study. The main objective of this dissertation is to find technologies that can achieve Portugal's NEC in a cost-effective way. For this purpose the identification of the most crucial sector activity categories regarding the emissions and the identification of the cheapest technologies that will enable the achievement of the targets, through the GAINS model database in activity level, emissions and costs by technology was performed, as well as the identification of the areas of Portugal for which those measures should be applied to achieve the target in a cost-effective way through the EESIP-Air model application, using spatially distributed emission data taken from EMEP. This work provides essential information to support and define an integrated strategy to fulfil NEC. Results show that the areas of Portugal with the highest levels of pollutant emissions are the west coast, with an incidence in the urban areas of Porto and Lisbon and, concerning NH3, also the areas of Alentejo and Trás-os-Montes (agricultural areas). NOx is the pollutant for which CLE2030 simulations are closer to the ceiling due to the measures related to the transport sector (European emission standards) so that, the extra effort to be done is not as relevant as for the other pollutants - NH3, SO2, NMVOC and PM2.5. Scenario OPT2030 led to the best solutions to achieve the NEC targets (43 kt/year for NH3, 95 kt/year for NOx, 27 kt/year for PM2.5, 30 kt/year for SO2 and 132 kt/year for VOC), allowing the reduction of the emission in 14% (NH3), 25% (NOx), 45% (PM2.5), 35% (SO2), and 21% (NMVOC) comparing with the scenario CLE2015. The costs obtained for each scenario are: 543 m€/year (CLE2015), 509 m€/year (CLE2030) and 518 m€/year (OPT2030). OPT2030 implies an increase in 2% relative to the cost for scenario CLE2030, however it represents the minimum required to achieve the NEC targets.