Latest ETC Reports (included in homepage)

This report analyses ozone levels and its precursors (NOₓ, NMVOCs and CH₄) within the context of the revised European Ambient Air Quality Directive (2024/2881) – the revised AAQD. Ozone remains a major public health challenge, causing 71,000 deaths annually across Europe. The revised AAQD strengthens ozone policy by aligning long-term objective for human health with WHO guidelines, mandating air quality plans when target value exceedances occur, and expanding precursor monitoring to 46 VOC species. Analysis shows progress in reducing precursor emissions between 1990 and 2022: NOx (-64%), NMVOCs (-62%), and CH4 (-39%). However, challenges persist in sectors like biological waste treatment, solvent use, and agriculture. Precursor monitoring networks are fragmented, but compliance is achievable through a tiered design leveraging existing infrastructures and satellite observations. Few dedicated ozone plans exist, though efforts are growing. The report provides monitoring recommendations aligned with the revised AAQD, supporting Member States in meeting the 2050 objective.

This report develops and proposes a new indicator based on Phytotoxic Ozone Dose (PODY) flux-based metric as a complementary information to the current EEA indicator AIR004, which is based on the O3 concentration-based metric AOT40. Similarly to the AIR004, the new PODY-based indicator should also show the O3 exposure of crops and forests separately. This report develops the first part of the new indicator, which is related to the flux-related O3 exposure of crops. The flux-related O3 exposure of forest trees is planned to be developed in 2026. Two options of the new indicator related to the crops are considered, i.e. the crop specific PODY indicator and a more generic metric based on the PODY used in the Integrated Assessment Modelling (i.e. PODYIAM), which can be applied for different crops. While the crop specific PODY metric provides more exact estimation of the O3 impacts on the corresponding crops, the PODYIAM is more suitable for estimating the O3 impacts on the wide variety of crops. For this reason, the metric POD3IAM for crops is recommended to be used in the PODY-based indicator for crops. In any case, the new AIR indicator based on PODY should complement the current AIR004 indicator, not substitute it.