Skip to navigation. If you have forgotten your password, we can send you a new one. We can categorise pollution by where we find it — in air, water or soil — or we can look at different pollution types, such as chemicals, noise or light. Another way to look at pollution is to go to its sources. Some pollution sources are spread out, such as cars, agriculture and buildings, but others can be better assessed as individual emission points.
Many of these point sources are large installations, such as factories and power plants. According to Eurostat, in , it accounted for At the same time, industry also accounts for more than half of the total emissions of some key air pollutants and greenhouse gases, as well as other important environmental impacts, including the release of pollutants to water and soil, the generation of waste and energy consumption. Air pollution is often associated with the burning of fossil fuels.
This obviously applies to power plants but also to many other industrial activities that may have their own onsite electricity or heat production, such as iron and steel manufacturing or cement production. Some activities generate dust that contributes to particulate matter concentrations in the air, whereas solvent use, for example in metal processing or chemical production, may lead to emissions of polluting organic compounds. Air emissions from industry in Europe have decreased over recent years.
These improvements in environmental performance by European industry have occurred for a number of reasons, including stricter environmental regulation, improvements in energy efficiency, a move towards less polluting types of manufacturing processes and voluntary schemes to reduce environmental impact. For many years, environmental regulation has limited the adverse impacts of industrial activities on human health and the environment.
Key EU measures targeting industrial emissions include the Industrial Emissions Directive, which covers about 52 of the largest industrial plants, and the Medium Combustion Plants Directive. However, despite these improvements, industry is still responsible for a significant burden on our environment in terms of pollution and waste generation. In essence, the E-PRTR enables citizens and stakeholders to learn about pollution in all corners of Europe, who the top polluters are and whether or not pollutant emission trends are improving.
E-PRTR data show, for each facility and year, information concerning the amount of pollutants released to air, water and land, as well as off-site transfers of waste and pollutants in waste water. E-PRTR data are freely available on a dedicated, interactive website. The website archives historical data on releases and transfers of 91 pollutants across 65 economic activities.
Moreover, the E-PRTR is now integrated with wider reporting under the Industrial Emissions Directive, including further information for large combustion plants. Together with the European Commission, the EEA is currently working on a new website to improve access to these data and information. Damage cost estimates are just that — estimates.
The majority of the quantified damage costs is caused by emissions of the main air pollutants and carbon dioxide. Although damage cost estimates associated with heavy metal and organic pollutant emissions are significantly lower, they still cause hundreds of millions of euros in harm to health and the environment and can cause significant adverse impacts on the local scale.
In some urban areas, the sum of area source emissions for a category can be much greater than emissions from major sources. Examples of area sources are gas stations and dry cleaners. Measured from the baseline inventory, we have subjected between 90 and percent of the area sources of urban air toxic pollutants to standards and have subjected 90 percent of the sources of seven potentially bio-accumulative toxic pollutants to standards.
We project that all of the regulated area sources will be in compliance no later than The EPA's area source program also includes a community support component because communities with disproportionate risks may be able to reduce some toxic sources more quickly and effectively through local initiatives rather than through national regulations. Mobile source emissions have been reduced by approximately 50 percent, about 1.
With additional fleet turnover, we expect these reductions to increase to 80 percent by the year In addition, mobile source diesel onroad and nonroad particulate matter decreased by about 27 percent from to Significant additional reductions roughly 90 percent are projected from to as many of the recent mobile source rules targeting diesel engines go into effect.
Another regulatory program that reduced mobile source air toxics was the mobile source air toxics rule, which controlled the benzene content of gasoline, as well as vehicle emissions at cold temperatures and emissions from portable fuel containers.
A recent assessment in Anchorage, Alaska, suggested that the fuel benzene standard alone reduced ambient benzene concentrations by more than 50percent. Other programs that are reducing mobile source air toxics are low-sulfur gasoline and diesel requirements, heavy-duty engine and vehicle standards, controls for small spark-ignition engines and recreational marine engines, the locomotive and commercial marine rule, standards for nonroad diesel engines, and the North American and Caribbean Emission Control Areas ECAs established to reduce emissions from ships.
Capitalizing on the growing public and political awareness of the health impacts of air pollution, we can accelerate climate action and improve public health. Over the last months, some studies have indicated certain positive short-term effects on air quality following the strict lockdown measures when comparing the same period year on year in major cities.
However, as economies restart and lockdown measures are eased, air pollution is rebounding quickly to pre COVID levels. There is an opportunity to either support a green recovery and build back better or lock-in patterns that will do permanent damage to our fragile systems for many years to come.
The International Day for Clean Air for blue skies has arrived at an important moment, taking place for the first time Sept. We must take the lessons learnt from the shutdowns to inspire cleaner air after the pandemic and make sure that investment into economic recovery promotes reduced emissions in parallel. Business and industry have a key role to play to reduce air pollution, as many of their activities cause emissions. They are both contributors and solution-providers; making them essential to lowering pollution, building innovation and showing governments that fixing air pollution and economic development are not mutually exclusive.
It is important to create a space where the scientific community, policy-makers, government officials and the private sector can strategize to reduce air pollution. Establishing programs that reduce air pollution from its own operations and also from its suppliers.
Promote awareness campaigns to transparently communicate the levels of emission caused by its operations and explain what will be done to reduce those emissions. Important is the addition of more renewable energy sources, substituting gasoline vehicles with zero-emission vehicles as electric vehicles. As an example rapid industrial expansion is China.
In china the government is supporting coal-fired power plant. Similarly, in the United States, emission standards setting has improved the air quality, especially in places of worth importance. Contrarily by adding ventilation, using air purifiers, purifying radon gas, running exhaust fans in bathrooms and kitchens and avoiding smoking people can avoid indoor air pollution. While working on a home project, use paint and other products with less volatile compounds. Countries all over the globe have commitments to limit carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases in the light of Paris Agreement [ 53 , 54 ] banning hydrophobic hydrocarbons HFCs other than chlorofluorocarbon CFCs [ 55 ].
In this method carbon dioxide is extracted from the air using a solid or liquid adsorbent. Examples of mostly used solid adsorbents include, activated carbon, zeolite, or activated alumina whereas liquid sorbents include, high pH solutions of sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide some organic solvents such as monoethanolamine [ 56 , 57 ].
A method for capturing carbon dioxide from the air includes a number of steps including exposing CO 2 in air to a solution containing an alkali to obtain an alkaline solution that absorbs the carbon dioxide [ 56 ].
Incomplete combustion of biomass results into production of hazardous gases. The main sources of such emissions are burning of wood, domestic waste, agricultural residues, waste, and charcoal. In developing economies combustion of biomass generally refers to the biofuels combustion for heating, lighting purposes and cooking in small combustion equipment.
Because the conditions of burning and types of these fuels vary widely, measures for this category are highly difficult and uncertain to predict. Produced of methane by coalification process, and vegetation is transformed into coal by many environmental conditions [ 58 ].
The amount of methane gas evolved by mining operations is a function of two main factors: coal depth and coal level [ 59 ]. From coal mining, there are four main sources of methane emissions, which are underground coal mines and surface coal mines.
These processes account for most of the global emissions of methane from mining. Surface coal mines emit much lower methane as compare to underground coal mines because generally coal mines are at lower rank and capture methane into methane during post-mining operations. Activities of coal mining and processing, continues after operations which emit the methane [ 60 ].
Methane emissions through rice production and cultivation can be decreased by selecting proper rice varieties, fertilizers, and water systems. It has been proved that larger total weight rice varieties emit less methane [ 61 , 62 ]. Application of potassium fertilizer during flowering period drainage reduce methane emissions. For the production of liquid natural gas and to run leachate evaporators landfill gas can be directly used as fuel.
In industrial processes such as kiln operations, boilers, drying operations, and asphalt and cement production landfill methane gas can be used and transported. Natural gas collected from landfills can be transported to local industries directly and use as an alternative or supplementary fuel [ 64 ]. Shifting to low-carbon fuels from high-carbon can be comparatively cost-effective principle to reduce the emissions of gaseous because this enhance the efficiency of combustion and reduce the amount of pollutants.
In addition, briquette coal and carbon burnout techniques are used in fuel based power plants to minimize the production of pollutants. This pre-combustion method requires almost no hardware changes to the facility and therefore has a lower investment cost.
There are some essential interrogations about the opportunities that exist for converting fuels in a cost-effective manner. Fuel choices are usually industry dependent, so cost-effective alternatives are limited however, some special opportunities to replace coal-fired boilers with natural gas fired gas-driven steam production; and use natural gas instead of coal to burn blast furnaces [ 65 ]. Improved fuel efficiency and reduced standard pollutant emissions depends on variable fuel costs which cannot be completely estimated.
According to an estimate carbon depletion can save 1. Carbon reductions achieved from ash, by replacing the production of Portland cement is estimated to reduce , tons of carbon dioxide annually [ 66 ]. Improvement in the current combustion systems have the potential to gear up the energy efficiency. According to the Department of Energy, the combined energy projects are the main source of greenhouse gases reduction. Technologies like the natural gas combined cycle and combined cycle gas turbine proved for the improving of combustion efficiency and proportionally reduced greenhouse gas emissions and standard pollutant emissions.
Additionally, integrated gasification combined cycle system is a step forward to reduce the costs associated with capturing and separating CO 2 from the exhaust stream. Increased operating and fuel costs may be offset by the combined benefits of increased efficiency, reduced pollutants, and credits for emission reductions.
An ample evidence that industrial upgradation can reduce greenhouse gas emission, pollutants, and lower operating costs, and current environmental regulations have hindered the adoption of this technology [ 68 ]. Air quality regulations determine the operational fuel input rather than power output emission to upgrade of thermal efficiency. However, the environmental agencies provide a guidance document on energy efficiency which begun to address regulatory barriers to improving thermal efficiency [ 69 ].
Another source of energy efficiency that can be achieved in the industrial sector is the use of direct fossil fuels. Manufacturing is a major candidate for improving energy efficiency, both of which are achieved through many technological upgrades. Overall, process control and energy management systems for all industries can better control combustion efficiency and fuel use; combined heat and power systems can use waste heat as additional energy; high-efficiency, low-friction motors and drive systems improved the overall efficiency of successfully generating power.
0コメント