Air Quality: Solvent VOC emission inventories

The first results for the 2021 ESIG VOC inventories were published in November, and details on country specific numbers based on the Additional Guidance on Solvent and Product Use VOC emissions published earlier this year to the EMEP/EEA guidebook were shared with some Member States that have already been waiting. TNO, ESIG’s partner and contractor, has further worked to improve the methodology and revisited the earliest numbers still available, comprising the data from 2013 and 2015.

The updates include a reanalysis of the entire dataset, including import/export for all the years, and TNO reviewed and included ethanol for all years. All of these enhancements were done with the overarching goal to make the time series as consistent as possible, i.e. not have a change in methodology from one year to another, since this is quite critical for emission inventories.

We are convinced that this improved the VOCs inventory, and the addition of more years is very good in support of the inventory compilers and thank TNO, for the further improvements! A full report will be available in early 2023.