Environmental ranking of European industrial facilities by toxicity and global warming potentials

Abstract

We present a methodology to develop the integrated toxicity and climate change risk assessment of Europe based facilities, industries and regions. There is an increasingly important need for large scale sustainability measurement solutions for company reporting with high granularity. In this paper we measure key aspects of Sustainable Development Goals in terms of human, cancer and non-cancer toxicity, ecotoxicity together with global warming impact potentials from point source pollutant releases of more than 10,000 companies and their 33,000 facilities in Europe from 2001 to 2017, by using the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register. For our assessment, we deploy a scientific consensus model, USEtox for characterizing human and ecotoxicological impacts of chemicals and the global warming potential values from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We discuss water and air emissions of dozens of pollutants in urban, rural, coastal and inland areas. Companies in the electricity production sector are estimated to have the largest human toxicity impact potential (46% of total) and the largest global warming impact potential (50%), while companies in the sewerage sector have the largest ecotoxicity impact potential (50%). In the overall economy, the correlation between facilities’ global warming and toxicity impact potentials is positive, however, not very strong. Therefore, we argue that carbon footprint of industrial organizations can be only used as a climate change risk indicator, but not as an overall environmental performance indicator. We confirm impact potentials of major pollutants in previous research papers (Hg accounting for 76% of the total human toxicity and Zn accounting for 68% of total ecotoxicity), although we draw the attention to the limitations of USEtox in case of metals. From 2001 to 2017 total human toxicity dropped by 28%, although the downward trend reversed in 2016. Ecotoxicity and global warming impact potentials remained unchanged in the same period. Finally, we show that the European pollutant release monitoring data quality could be further improved, as only three quarters of the toxic releases are measured in the Member States of the European Union, and a high share of toxic pollutant releases are only estimated in some countries. Of the measured or calculated toxic releases, only one third is reported according to the most robust CEN/ISO standards and about one fifth according to the least preferred other methods, like engineering judgements.

New Sustainability Perspectives on Pollutant Releases from Canada’s Nuclear Sector

“…The result is a single estimation of cumulative effective dose to a person beyond the fence line of the facility and is an additional element in the CNSC reports that informs the data user about the level of risk from facility-wide radionuclide releases. By contrast, such an overall interpretation of risk that accounts for individual fate and toxicity properties and mechanisms of various pollutants released from a facility, and/or cumulative effects is not currently a standard offering from NPRI or other PRTRs data but is an evolving area. − The nuclear sector example of reported total exposure or risk may present additional future research directions for PRTR programs to this end. As shown in Figure , over the 2011–2021 radionuclide data set, the highest estimated annual public dose was from Cameco fuel manufacturing in Port Hope (ON) in 2021 (0.3 mSv) which was well below the regulated effective dose limit for the general public from a licensed nuclear facility in Canada of 1 mSv per year, suggesting that despite releases of radionuclides from nuclear sector facilities, these do not equate to levels of concern to human health.…”

Climate Change Transition and Physical Risks of Industrial Companies in Australia, Canada, the European Union and the United States

“…The Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs) was agreed on by international parties to register environmental footprints across regions and times. PRTRs are increasingly used as a fundamental data source for corporate environmental footprint research, 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 .…”