Publications | Umweltbundesamt

Climate | Energy, Sustainability | Strategies | International matters

Reasoning Goals of Climate Protection

Specification of Article 2 UNFCCC

Despite of the widely accepted but general goal of the Climate Convention to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system, its interpretation with regard to further international commitments is still pending. This situation gives reason for investigations towards reasonable specifications of the Convention’s ultimate goal.  read more

Climate | Energy, Economy | Consumption, Air

Risks and Benefits of Fluorinated Greenhouse Gases in Processes and Products under Special Consideration of the Properties Intrinsic to the Substance

Fluorinated greenhouse gases (GHG) are used in a multitude of applications to date. Next to perfluorinated compounds (e.g. CF4, C2F6 or SF6), especially the fluorinated hydrocarbons (HFC) are of relevance by means of volume. HFCs represent the special focus of this study. They are mainly applied as a substitute for fluorinated and chlorinated hydrocarbons (HCFC) which are internationally banned un...read more

Water

Basic principles for selecting the most cost-effective combinations of measures for inclusion in the programme of measures as described in Article 11 of the Water Framework Directive

HANDBOOK

This Handbook and the associated research report outlines a methodological concept for the procedure for selecting cost-effective combinations of measures in accordance with the Water Framework Directive, including the sample application thereof. The starting point for the methodology developed in this project is the inventory required by the end of 2004 under the Water Framework Directive. By rec...read more

Waste | Resources

Pilot study on statistics on the import and export of waste in Germany

Pursuant to Article 5(1) of the Regulation (EC) No 2150/2002 of the European Parliament and the Council of 25 November 2002 on waste statistics

On 30 December 2002 Regulation (EC) N° 2150/2002 of the European Parliament and the Council of 25 November 2002 on waste statistics1 entered into force. It was last amended by Regulation 574/2004 of 23 February 2004. This Regulation (further referred to as the waste statistics Regulation) sets the framework for the production of statistics by the EU Member States on generation, recovery and dispos...read more

Health, Sustainability | Strategies | International matters

Environmental health risks -

what are the differences between children and adults ?

Society places a high value on protecting children. For that reason, the demand is repeatedly made that children’s particular vulnerability be given special consideration when evaluating environment-related health risks and deriving limit values. Current regulatory practice often attempts to do this in a relatively schematic way, in the form of safety factors. An intraspecies factor (“uncertainty...read more

Air

Formulation of criteria to be used for the determination of the accuracy of model calculations according to the requirements of the EU Directives for air quality

– Examples using the chemical transport model REM-CALGRID

This report reviews the EU Directive’s guidelines for a model’s quality assessment, and examines specific model quality criteria, that may be used for model accuracy assessment according to the intentions of the EU directives. Several model accuracy measures are tested utilizing a one-year simulation with the chemical transport model REM-CALGRID (RCG). RCG was applied in the regional scale mode, c...read more

Chemicals

Initial Draft Report: OECD validation Phase 1 (Optimisation) for the Amphibian Metamorphosis Assay

(Frosch-Metamorphose-Assay - Optimierung des Testprotokolls)

The purpose of this document is to summarize the results of an international round of testing and research aimed at developing and optimizing an amphibian-based screening assay for thyroid axis disruption. This effort originated at a meeting of the Amphibian Expert Group, an advisory group to the Validation Management Group, in June 2003 at a meeting hosted by the US Environmental Protection Agenc...read more

Economy | Consumption, Transport

Economic measures for the reduction of the environmental impact of air transport: noise-related landing charges

Due to the predicted growth rates for air traffic and the intended capacity extensions at many international airports, economic instruments have become more important. This study examines how LTO-charges, which are differentiated according to aircraft-noise emissions, can stimulate incentives for airlines to use less-noisier aircraft.read more