Despite a significant reduction in air pollution from large industrial installations in Europe over the last ten years, the costs of this pollution to health and the environment (external costs) are still considerable, representing 2% of the EU’s GDP in 2021, according to an analysis published by the European Environment Agency (EEA) on Thursday 25 January.
This report presents an updated assessment of trends based on data supplied by 10,000 large industrial facilities for the period 2012-2021.
It shows that external costs have fallen by a third in a decade, but that in 2021 they will still represent between €268 and €428 billion a year. Only 1% of the most polluting industrial installations - including a large number of coal-fired power stations - caused half of the total damage, the EEA points out.
In 2021, the five EU countries whose installations contributed the highest external costs were Germany, Poland, Italy, France and Spain.
See the EEA report: https://aeur.eu/f/ald (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)