Cost curves for abatement of air emissions

As exploratory work, the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) commissioned Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) to complete a study to:

• identify actions to reduce emissions of ozone precursors, namely oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and particles (as PM₁₀), in the Greater Metropolitan Region (GMR) and the Sydney and Wollongong sub-regions
• develop and apply a methodology to rank actions according to their emission reduction potential and cost-effectiveness, and indicate programs that could minimise the costs of achieving target emissions reductions.

The SKM study explored the potential for this tool to help identify programs that warrant further investigation and full cost benefit analysis.

SKM advises that a number of constraints apply to the study report and its findings:

• The costs of emission abatements indicate an order of magnitude only.
• Emission reduction potentials and associated abatement costs vary in reliability for the different actions.
• The list of actions included is not definitive, with actions having been excluded, for example, where data necessary for modelling were not available.

SKM also identified a number of challenges in ranking actions which affect emissions of multiple pollutants. OEH will address these challenges in future work developing and applying other models and approaches.

SKM's final report on Cost Abatement Curves for Air Emission Reduction Actions (CostCurveAirEmissionRedn.pdf, 4.88MB) shows the cost curves initially derived from the model.

Note

The results and analyses contained in this report are based on a number of specified assumptions and parameters. Users of this report must make their own assessment about the suitability of the approach. OEH does not accept responsibility for any errors or omissions. The views expressed in the report do not necessarily represent those of OEH.