The main objective of this paper is to track the changing importance of air pollution impacts by Belgian passenger cars. The assessment of environmental impacts is based on the calculation of external costs with the ExternE methodology. This methodology is applied to a large number of cases from which an aggregated estimate is calculated. From these results it is shown that the decline of air pollution impacts from Belgian passenger cars between 1993 and 1998 was limited. This can be explained by a number of factors: the importance of unregulated pollutants, the relatively slow turnover of the fleet, the trend towards more diesel vehicles and the increase in annual mileage. The secondary objective is to investigate to which degree the choice of emission factors influences the conclusions. Emission factors were generated using data from MEET as well as from Infras. Although estimates of the overall cost of air pollution derived from both datasets are similar, the trend towards improved air quality is more pronounced for MEET. (A)
Abstract