AN INTEGRATED POLLUTANT EMISSION REGISTER IN THE NETHERLANDS

Pieter van der Most (Inspectorate for Environmental Protection, Department for Monitoring and Information Management P.O.Box 30945 2500 GX Den Haag The Netherlands )

INTRODUCTION

A well established emission inventory is an essential tool for defining an effective environmental policy as well as monitoring the results of such a policy. Emission inventories have been established in many countries. However most of these systems only cover air pollutants, describe only a limited selection of activities or do not cover the whole country. Some pollutants are only relevant for a single compartment but metals and persistent organic pollutants are emitted both to air and water. In those cases an integrated system as developed in The Netherlands is especially useful.

GENERAL SCOPE

The key concept for the analysis and reporting of environmental data in Europe is the so-called DPSIR framework. (Driving forces, Pressures, State, Impact and Response) A driving force can be for instance a certain industrial activity or the population density. The driving force causes pressure on the environment leading to a greater impact , and a response decreasing the quality.

To get a good insight into the causes of the emission descriptive information about the activity is necessary. As many activities result in emissions to air as well as to water and often produce solid waste an integrated system needs only a single activity description. Another advantage is the possibility to employ mass balances as an estimation or verification tool, diminishing the effects of intercompartmental exchange on the quality of the data.

DEVELOPMENT IN THE NETHERLANDS

In 1974 the development of an integrated system started in The Netherlands. This system is at the moment operational as the national database providing information on international, national and regional, and sometimes local level. An important application is the use at establishing a relation between emissions at the source, transportmodeling, exchange between compartments, determining the load and evaluation of effects.

SOME RESULTS FOR HEAVY METALS.

Representative results are presented for the following areas:

n Contribution of the different activities to emissions of metals to air and water.

n Geographical distribution of emissions from all sources in The Netherlands

n Trends in emissions of metals between 1995 and 1998

n Change in contribution of emissions from metals from different sources

n Quality of contribution to emissions of metals to water.

REFERENCES

Coordination Committee Target group Monitoring, Emission data for The Netherlands for 1997 with estimates for 1998. (february 2000)

Evers, C.W.A. National Pollutant Emission Register in the Netherlands (1998) Paper submitted to the OECD International Conference on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers Tokio 1998.

Evers, C.W.A,. Van der Most, P.F.J. Estimating Environmental releases from diffuse sources (1998) Paper presented to Unitar (1998)