European community for mobility management

During last 10 to 15 years black carbon has increasingly been recognised in the scientific community to be one significant contributor to climate change. With a global warming potential of 2200 in a time horizon of 20 years and 680 in a time horizon of 100 years black carbon accounts for 16% of global warming, leaving it second only to CO2.

However, most of todays carbon footprints, comparisons and fuel assessments account for so called homogeneous greenhouse gases like CO2, CH4, N2O and halocarbons only. Despite their importance for the net climate effect gases ore particles which are not regulated by the IPPC such as black carbon, sulphates ore e.g. the ozone precursors nitrogen oxides (NOx) are not included.

A scientific review published by Atlantic Consulting, an independent, privately-owned specialised in the assessment of environmental impacts highlights that the inclusion of these additional global warmers would allow for a more complete assessment of the global warming footprints of different fuels in their specific applications. Relative warming impacts and resulting assessments of the fuels would significantly be changed. Assessment results for the automotive fuels diesel and LPG as well as for selected heating fuels are presented in the review.

The complete review is available at:
http://www.aegpl.eu/Content/Default.asp?PageID=78&DocID=1029

Source:
http://www.aegpl.eu