Impacts of a climate change initiative on air pollutant emissions: Insights from the Covenant of Mayors

Abstract

The Covenant of Mayors (CoM) is a successful European initiative which encourages local authorities to be proactive in fighting climate change. Recently, it expanded to cover adaptation and energy access/poverty and became a global initiative. In this study we investigate an additional perspective: synergies and trade-offs between climate and air quality. Signatories pledge to reduce their Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and voluntarily report their emissions, energy consumption and the measures that they carry out to reach their goals. We develop a methodology to estimate air pollutant emissions corresponding to CO2 emissions CoM signatories report, using information they already submit and national estimates of air pollutant emission factors. The methodology is applied to over 1600 signatories in Europe, representing over 80 million inhabitants. Results show that, in general, signatories are reducing both types of emissions. However, there are also cases where emissions increase. We explore the reasons behind these changes and highlight the role of technological improvement. This work calls for an increased coherence between climate and air quality plans at the local scale and provides a first step and a tool to support signatories, even the smallest ones, to move in this direction.