FAQ
The Italian Legislative framework
In Italy the development of AEIs by Regions is guaranteed by law through articles 4 and 5 of Presidential Decree num. 203 (24th may 1988), and by Ministerial Decree 20th may 1991.
The latter fixed for the first time the "criteria for the census of atmospheric pollutants emissions in order to predispose an atmospheric emission inventory within the framework of the plans for cleaning and preserving air quality". The same law defines also AEIs as coherent collections of data about emissions disaggregated by:
- economical activity (e.g. electric energy production, painting of vehicles);
- territorial units (e.g. regions, counties, municipalities);
- time interval (e.g. one year, one month);
- burnt fuel, if relevant (e.g. for emissions from thermal power plants).
With Legislative Decree num. 351 (4th August 1999), EC Directive 96/62/EC concerning air quality was incorporated into National Legislation by defining the whole picture about atmospheric pollution and air quality evaluation and management. The 351/99 Decree established that Regions regularly have to carry out an evaluation of environmental air quality on the whole regional territory, identifying the differently characterized areas with respect to pollution limit values (articles 5 e 6) and classifying them as:
- non-polluted areas, where no exceedance of limit values is noticed for any pollutant;
- polluted areas, where there are exceedances of a limit value within a fixed tolerance border for at least one pollutant,;
- particularly polluted areas, where even tolerance border is exceeded.
For polluted zones, Regions must predispose an action plan and programs for air quality improvement (articles 7 e 8) taking into account the local AEI. For the "clean" areas, in order to preserve their cleanliness in the future, Regions must predispose a plan for the maintenance of air quality at optimal levels (article num.9), always referring to the emission inventory.
In actuation of Legislative Decree num. 351/99, Ministerial Decree num. 261 (1st October 2002) was promulgated. It defines the modalities of preliminary evaluation of air quality and criteria for drafting air quality preservation and improvement programs. Article num. 4 of the Decree characterizes AEIs as the main knowledge instruments for the redaction of improvement programs. Annex 2 lists instead the criteria to be followed during compilation of inventories in order to warrant a proper reliability and an acceptable uniformity degree for the collected data. Those criteria derive from the Guidelines to the implementation of emission inventories carried out by
CTN-ACE, the National Thematic Center for Atmosphere, Climate Change, Emissions, formed by
APAT and by the Regional and County System of Environmental Protection Agencies (ARPA, APPA). CTN-ACE is one of the National Thematic Centers (CTN) constituted by APAT with supporting functions regarding specific environmental problems.
The aforementioned Guidelines sport the goal of providing a methodological and operative instrument to anyone that compiles a local inventory and specifies different levels of development with respect to one's needs. In this document information are provided about:
- definition and targets of inventories;
- activity planning, data collection and elaboration with an evaluation of the necessary resources in order to set an AEI up, its usage, maintenance and update;
- data quality, qualitative and quantitative evaluation of emission uncertainty;
- references to international agreements about the main environmental themes.
European most widespread methodology for emissions evaluation was elaborated within the framework of CORINAIR project (Coordination Information AIR), promoted and coordinated by DG XI of European Community within the framework of the experimental program CORINE (Coordinated Information on the Environment in the European Community), undertaken by the Commission of European Communities following the decision of the Council on 27th June 1985.
Lombardy Region Inventory was set up following this methodology and provides the evaluation of total emissions per year of macro and micro-pollutants, disaggregated by emission activity levels defined by the SNAP classification (Selected Nomenclature for Air Pollution) and grouped spatially at municipal level.
