Long-term reductions in costs of controlling regional air pollution in Europe due to climate policy

This paper examines to what extent climate change policies will alter the effectiveness of agreed-upon or future policies to reduce regional air pollution in Europe and vice versa. And when is it cost-effective to combat regional air pollution with clean technology instead of add-on technology? For this exercise, several extensions were made to the energy model TIMER, to introduce add-on abatement technologies, specified in terms of costs and reduction potentials, in order to be able to calculate cost-effective emission reduction strategies for different scenarios and regions. The results show that add-on technologies to reduce regional air pollution remain necessary throughout the century. The costs to reach the NOxemission reduction targets in Europe are about three times as high as for SO2. Mitigation costs averaged over the century by add-on technologies can be reduced by climate measures by 50-70% for SO2and around 50% for NOx. The costs of SO2and NOxmitigation by add-on technology in a world without climate policy are comparable or in some periods even higher than the costs of an integrated mitigation of SO2, NOxand CO2emissions if a reduction of specific costs by learning is, in contrast with energy technologies, not assumed for abatement technologies. So, the costs of SO2and NOxadd-on measures avoided by climate policies can outweigh the costs of these climate measures. The total annual costs are in the order of 1 or 2% of the present GDP, depending on the scenario. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.