At the end of 2024, the European Union took a very important step towards combating air pollution and assessing and managing air quality by adopting a new European directive. It is an important step toward better protecting Europeans’ health and moving forward on the path to zero pollution in our environment by 2050.
The revised Directive comes with a series of new measures and stricter standards to ensure that people enjoy cleaner air in the coming years. Since the 1980s, the EU has been implementing policies on air quality that have contributed to a substantial decrease in most air pollutants over the past decades. However, the air quality challenge is far from being solved. Although the number of people exposed to harmful air pollution has significantly decreased, persistent exceedances above World Health Organization guideline exposure levels remain for several air pollutants. The revised Ambient Air Quality Directive addresses these challenges by building on the previous policies and aligning EU air quality standards more closely with scientific recommendations.
Where levels are elevated above EU air quality standards, Member States must prepare air quality plans to keep exceedance periods as short as possible. The revised Ambient Air Quality Directive, which entered into force on 10 December 2024, aims to:
- Define common methods to monitor, assess and inform on ambient air quality in the EU;
- Establish objectives for ambient air quality to avoid, prevent or reduce harmful effects on human health and the environment;
- Guide the assessment of air quality supported by a representative high-quality monitoring network, with more than 4,000 air quality monitoring stations across the EU and an enhanced use of air quality modelling;
- Exchange reliable, objective and comparable informationon air quality, including to the wider public.
The revised Ambient Air Quality Directive merges the previous two Directives into one and streamlines provisions to clarify and simplify the rules, aligning 2030 EU air quality standards more closely with the recommendations of the World Health Organization. This is an important step to better protect our health and move forward on the path to zero pollution in our environment by 2050.
It comes with a series of new measures and stricter standards to make sure Europeans enjoy healthier air by:
- Cutting by more than half the allowed annual limit value for the main air pollutant – fine particulate matter (PM2.5);
- Updating air quality standards for allowed levels in ambient air for a total of twelve air pollutants, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide/nitrogen oxides, particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5), ozone, benzene, lead, carbon monoxide, arsenic, cadmium, nickel, and benzo(a)pyrene.
Techne Consulting, partner of I-CHANGE, has been developing, for about thirty years, several projects related to air quality planning within the regulatory framework outlined by European directives both at national level (in Italy, and in the Balkans) and at regional level. In recent years it has carried out a national study for the Italian Ministry of the Environment for the development and diffusion of procedures for the reduction of atmospheric emissions deriving from the combustion of biomass for civil use which represents the main source of PM10 at global level.
Techne Consulting has recently collaborated or is collaborating in Italy with the regional administrations of Campania, Umbria, Veneto, Liguria, Tuscany and Puglia for the development of the relevant regional air quality plans according to the current European Union legislation that national legislation prescribes at regional level. The most recent plans contain actions to comply with the limits set by the new European directive for 2030.
Of particular importance, as the activity carried out in I-CHANGE highlights, is the active involvement of citizens in Living Labs to raise awareness of the effects of personal behavior on air quality. Actions in this direction are contained in the most recent plans. The new air quality directive suggest measures to encourage behavioural changes to be included in air quality plans and air quality roadmaps for improvement in ambient air quality. Currently the major problems concern PM10 emissions from wood combustion and private road traffic with diesel vehicles for nitrogen oxides. In both cases, awareness of one’s personal actions and their modification is crucial in achieving the objectives.