Author(s)

M. Dios, M. Morán, F. Carrera, J. A. Souto, J. J. Casares, A. Díaz & M. L. Macho

Abstract

Since 2008, E-PRTR is the European Emissions and Transfer Register of Pollutants, which was set to accomplish the UNECE Aarhus Convention about the information, public participation in decisions and access to the judgement in environmental issues. This pollutants emissions inventory follows a methodology based in the imperative declaration of emissions into the atmosphere and to water by the potential sources, included in the Directive 96/61/CE. As a consequence, the accuracy of this inventory depends on the information declared by the sources. In this work, a systematic methodology to validate the declared emissions was designed and applied to the Galician region. This methodology is based in a data structure of plant/activity-process-sourcepollutant, that is, a flowsheeting analysis of every plant was developed in order to associate each process to each source (i.e. chimney) at the same plant; with this approach, estimation of the pollutants emissions from every source is obtained by the calculation of emissions by process, based in different emissions factors. Of course, complementary data from the processes (i.e. fuel consumption, energy production, ...) is required. Results of the E-PRTR for 2008 and 2010 years at Galicia show significant differences between the emissions distribution by sector, depending on the pollutant; this can be explained by changes in the processes technologies and performance. About the validation, in a first stage less than 50% of the sources provided acceptable emissions with the complementary information for validation; some of them complete this information upon request. Keywords: emissions inventory, validation data, emission calculation methodology, E-PRTR.

Keywords

emissions inventory, validation data, emission calculation methodology, E-PRTR.