Stronger evidence has emerged in recent years about the detrimental impact of air pollution to human health, the economy and the environment. Consequently, there is growing public and political pressure for tougher action to reduce levels of air pollution in the UK. The report focuses on the sources of, impacts of, and attitudes towards air pollution across the whole of the UK. The UK’s departure from the EU means that there is an opportunity to raise air pollution standards in the UK. The report proposes new, ambitious legal limits, legal responsibilities and policies on air pollution. EMISSION Bright Blue Campaign brightblue.org.uk ISBN: 978-1-911128-10-6 IMPOSSIBLE? Air pollution, national governance and the transport sector Ryan Shorthouse and William Nicolle Emission impossible? Air pollution, national governance and the transport sector Ryan Shorthouse and William Nicolle The moral right of the authors has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. Bright Blue is an independent think tank and pressure group for liberal conservatism. Bright Blue takes complete responsibility for the views expressed in this publication, and these do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor. Director: Ryan Shorthouse Chair: Matthew d’Ancona Members of the board: Diane Banks, Philip Clarke, Alexandra Jezeph, Rachel Johnson, Richard Mabey Design: Chris Solomons First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Bright Blue Campaign ISBN: 978-1-911128-10-6 www.brightblue.org.uk Copyright © Bright Blue Campaign, 2019 Contents About the authors 2 Acknowledgements 3 Executive summary 4 1 Introduction 23 2 Methodology 39 3 Sources of, consequences of and public attitudes 42 towards air pollution 4 Transport policies and technologies for reducing 72 air pollution 5 New policies 99 Annex: Polling questions 122 1 About the authors Ryan Shorthouse Ryan is the Founder and Chief Executive of Bright Blue. Under his leadership, it has grown significantly in size, reputation and impact. The organisation has been shortlisted for the 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 UK social policy think tank of the year and UK environment and energy think tank of the year in the prestigious annual Prospect Magazine awards. Ryan was named as ‘One to watch’ in 2015 by The Observer. Many of his policy ideas have been adopted by the UK Government over the past decade. Ryan was previously a Research Fellow for the think tank the Social Market Foundation. William Nicolle William is a Researcher at Bright Blue focusing on energy and environmental policy, and was part of the team whose work contributed to Bright Blue being shortlisted for the 2019 Think Tank of the year in the Prospect Magazine awards. Previously, he worked at British Gas as an Analyst. He holds a degree in Geography from the University of Oxford, and writes regularly for the Centre Write blog. 2 Acknowledgements This report has been made possible with the generous support of the Oak Foundation. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors. We would like to give special thanks to Eamonn Ives for his initial work on this report. We are also very grateful to Alexandra Kennaugh for her patience and support. We would like to thank Ruth Chambers and Sam Hall for reviewing the paper and Professor Martin Williams for his comments on the technical aspects of the report. Opinium conducted the polling for this report and we would like to thank their team for their care and attention to detail. James Crouch and Jack Tadman provided vital assistance with the design of the questions and with the analysis. The polling included an online survey of 4,007 UK adults and was conducted between 28th February and 5th March 2018. 3 Executive summary Since the first Clean Air Act 1956, the UK has enjoyed considerably cleaner air. Yet, parts of the UK still exceed legal levels of certain air pollutants set by the European Union (EU) and recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Stronger evidence has emerged in recent years about the detrimental impact of air pollution to human health, the economy and the environment. Consequently, there is growing public and political pressure for tougher action to reduce levels of air pollution in the UK. The UK’s departure from the EU – triggered by the 2016 Referendum result – means that there is an opportunity to raise air pollution standards in the UK. As Chapter One outlines, air pollution is the concentration of harmful gaseous and non-gaseous pollutants in the atmosphere. Four air pollutants dominated the total mass in the air in the UK in 2017: carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx); ammonia (NH3); and, non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs). Two further pollutants also formed sizeable minorities of the total mass in the air: particulate matter measuring less than 10 micrometres and less than 2.5 micrometres (PM); and, sulphur dioxide (SO2). The emission of these leading air pollutants has decreased in the last few decades, except for NH3, which has increased marginally. Air pollution is also analysed by the concentration of air pollutants in the atmosphere. This is measured as the amount of a pollutant in one cubic meter of air by mass in micrograms (μg/m3), using monitoring 4 Executive summary stations at roadside, urban background, rural background and industrial sites. Doing so means we can gauge their presence at ground level, where people will be exposed to them. Analyses of the concentration of air pollutants in the UK tend to focus on PM and NO2, which is a form of NOx, due to their known association with increased risks of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. PM2.5, PM10 and NOx have all gradually declined in their annual mean concentrations across all types of monitoring stations over time. However, both PM2.5 and PM10 have slowed in the rate of reduction in recent years. The concentrations of PM and NO2 vary greatly across the UK. Out of all the regions of the UK, Greater London has the highest annual running mean concentration across all types of monitoring stations for NO2 and PM10, and Yorkshire and Humberside the highest for PM2.5. Scotland has the lowest running annual mean concentration across all types of monitoring stations for NO2 and PM2.5. Importantly, the UK has legal ‘targets’, ‘limits’ and ‘ceilings’ for different pollutants. These derive from a mixture of international, EU and domestic legislation. This report refers to the permitted measure of the total emission of air pollutants as ‘ceilings’, and the permitted measure of the concentration of air pollutants as ‘limits’. ‘Targets’ refer to a level of total emissions or concentrations of air pollutants fixed to be attained where possible over a given period. The UK currently meets all its legal requirements on air pollutants, except for hourly and annual limits on NO2. The UK is split into 43 zones for reporting purposes on legal limits of concentrations. In 2010, legal NO2 limits were breached in 40 these reporting areas. Based on the most recent data, the UK still breaches its legal limits for NO2 in 37 of these reporting areas. The principal source of NO2 concentrations in the UK is transport, which is why we focus on transport policy in this report. Focus of this research and the methodology This report focuses on the sources of, impacts of, and attitudes towards 5 Emission impossible? air pollution across the whole of the United Kingdom. It then goes on to explore the role the national Government does and could play in reducing air pollution, particularly from NO2. This report seeks to answer the following five research questions: 1. What are the sources and consequences of air pollution in the UK? 2. What are the transport policies, both historically and currently, that the UK governments have adopted to reduce air pollution? 3. Is there a case for the UK Government taking further action on transport policy to reduce air pollution in the UK? 4. What is the level of understanding and concern about the impact of, and policies around, air pollution amongst the UK public? 5. Following Brexit, what new national-level transport legislation and policies are needed to further reduce air pollution? In order to answer these questions, we employed three research methods, described in detail in Chapter Two. First, we conducted an extensive literature review of existing UK and international evidence. Second, we consulted with several leading academics, health professionals, politicians, opinion formers, campaigners and researchers, and industry professionals. Third, we commissioned nationally representative polling of 4,007 UK adults to explore public attitudes towards air pollution. The polling was conducted by Opinium. A full list of polling questions can be found in the Annex of this report. These research methods enabled us to identify: the primary sources and consequences of, and public attitudes towards, air pollution in the UK (Chapter Three); and, different national transport policies and a range of technologies that can be used to reduce air pollution (Chapter Four). Sources of air pollution in the UK Air pollution has several different sources, both anthropogenic (man- 6 Executive summary made) and natural. Anthropogenic and natural sources also interact to affect levels of air pollution. The sources of air pollution vary from location to location. In dense urban areas, for instance, the emission of NOx from transport will contribute a greater share of overall air pollution, whilst in the countryside, NH3 and PM from animal agriculture and pesticides typically takes up a bigger proportion of air pollution.