Development and Application of an Asymptotic Level Transport Pollution Model for Luxembourg Energy Air Quality Project

The connections between air pollution and the increase of respiratory diseases, are well known. In Europe, many efforts have been carried out towards the mitigation of the pollutants’ emissions over the last decades. The European Union supports the implementation of structural planning measures to control air pollution. The assessment and evaluation of these air quality policies must be carried out with the help of dedicated integrated assessment models.
The use of integrated assessment models, which combine models from different fields, raises the need for developing specific modelling concepts in order to provide results to support policy decisions within a practical time frame.
This work presents the methodology and the development of a dedicated air quality model for an integrated assessment model. This approach has been designed for the Luxembourg Energy and Air Quality, LEAQ, integrated assessment model. It combines an air quality model, AUSTAL2000-AYLTP, with a techno-economic model, ETEM, which computes ozone precursors emissions related to energy consumption. The models are coupled via an optimization engine, which minimizes the total energy cost for a given ozone level. AUSTAL2000, a Lagrangian transport model, has been adapted to receive a photochemical module, the AsYmptotic Level Transport Pollution, AYLTP. This module consists of a Look-Up Table of quasi-linear reaction rates. A balance has been found that gives an acceptable level of accuracy, given the reduction of computational time.
The results of the air quality model have been compared with measurements, and with the regional model LOTOS-EUROS and are considered satisfactory for this type of approach. Regarding the LEAQ framework, two study cases have been simulated, one including only the national emissions from Luxembourg country, and a second one for the Luxembourg region, including the neighbouring countries emissions.