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Report n°4: How Much to Spend for the Protection of Health and Environment

General Observations

For mature and widely used control technologies, the abatement costs are reasonably well known, but for the more important case of new technologies or new applications their estimation is often very difficult and uncertain. Often the industries concerned by a proposed reduction of pollution may not have all the required information, and if they do they may prefer to keep it confidential; in particular in negotiations with the government they may be tempted to exaggerate the costs.

Marginal abatement cost curves have been published for several pollutants, for example:

  • for NOx, SO2 and VOC by IIASA [1998] for all countries of Europe, and
  • for dioxins and toxic metals by ENTEC [2003] for the UK.

However, these data are aggregates over all sectors and technologies, rather than for specific abatement options. Furthermore, abatement costs can vary greatly with the specific conditions of different sites where a given abatement technology is to be applied. If one has the necessary abatement cost data, the cost-benefit analysis is straightforward, requiring only the comparison of abatement cost with damage cost.