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Pollution: Europe still has a long way to go

According to the European Environment Agency (EEA) air pollution from Europe's largest industrial facilities could cost society as much as € 189 billion. These figures concern the negative impacts on the environment including health problems, lost work days or damage to buildings and reduced agricultural yields. The EEA report underlines that it broadly represents the GDP of a country like Finland. Even more interesting is that half of these damage costs are caused by just 1% of the industrial plants. Thus, these industries are easily identifiable. And indeed, 30 facilities have been identified as causing the highest damage. 26 of this total number of companies are power-generating facilities, mainly fueled by coal and lignite and located predominantly in Germany and Eastern Europe. But it is fair to say that damage costs have declined over the period 2008-2012. However, it is not clear whether these lower emissions are more closely linked to a better implementation of environmental standards or to the economic recession which affected Europe. Consequently Europe could not become a model for the rest of the world. Carbon is still building up in the atmosphere and global warming is a reality. According to Greenpeace we must blame an ongoing industrial lobby always pushing for weaker pollution limits. Moreover, the "green organisation" said that the proposed EU standards on toxic emissions from coal plants would be even less strict than in China! Despite all that, and this is good news, Europe's targets for the proportion of energy coming from renewables namely 27% by 2030, seems realistic.

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