Publications | Umweltbundesamt

Water

Flyer Water Management in Germany

Water Supply - Waste Water Disposal

In Germany, ensuring water supply is a mandatory duty of the state. Responsibility lies with the municipalities, which can use a range of organisational and legal forms to comply with this duty. Applied to the abstracted water volumes this means that the public water supply abstracted around 5,1 billion cubic meters of water to supply the population with drinking water. Groundwater reserves are th...read more

Sustainability | Strategies | International matters, Transport

Assessment of potential for masking in marine mammals of the Antarctic exposed to underwater sound from airguns

Functional marine mammal acoustic communication evolved under natural ambient noise levels, which makes communication vulnerable to anthropogenic noise sources. In this report, we consider the potential long-range effects of airgun noise on marine mammal communication range. During the propagation process, airgun impulses are reflected multiple times from the sea surface, refracted in sound channe...read more

Chemicals

Protection of biodiversity of free living birds and mammals in respect of the effects of pesticides

After agriculture in Germany has become more intensive over the past decades, many populations of farmland birds and mammals are in an unfavourable conservation status. For 27 farmland bird species and 22 farmland mammal species we compile trends, habitat (crop) selection, threats and risk management measures. There is scientific-based evidence for indirect effects of pesticides at the population...read more

Chemicals

Standardisation of release factors for the exposure assessment under REACH Developments since 2010

Under the European Chemicals legislation ⁠REACH⁠ the release of a substance into the environment is estimated on the basis of emission factors. For this purpose industry can deduce realistic emission factors by developing specific Environmental Release Categories (spERCs) and documenting them in a corresponding fact sheet. The current project builds up on an earlier assessment conduc...read more

Chemicals

Assessment of Impacts of a European Register of Products Containing Nanomaterials

The implementation of a nanoproduct register as an instrument to increase the transparency on the use of nanomaterials in the EU and to ensure the regulatory oversight on nanomaterials has been discussed for quite a time. Reasons to implement a register are the uncertainties concerning the evaluation of the possible risks of nanomaterials for human health and the environment and the lack of knowle...read more

Economy | Consumption

Methodological Convention 2.0 for Estimates of Environmental Costs, Annex B

Annex B: Best-practice Cost Rates for Air Pollutants, Transport, Power Generation and Heat Generation

Annex B to the Methodological Convention 2.0 for Estimates of Environmental Damage contains UBA’s recommendations for best-practice cost rates for greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants and, based on this, estimates of the environmental costs of transport and of power and heat generation. The recommendations are based in large part on results of the research project “Estimation of Environment...read more

Economy | Consumption

Environmental costs in the energy and transport sectors – Recommendations by the Federal Environment Agency

The background paper presents an overview of key contents of the Methodological Convention 2.0 for Estimates of Environmental Costs and its annexes. The Methodological Convention 2.0 of the Federal Environment Agency summarises current scientific knowledge in this field, presents recommendations for best-practice cost rates and makes transparent the underlying assumptions and normative judgments....read more