The MEET project - 'Methodologies for estimating air pollutant emissions from transport' - has been undertaken in order to provide a basic, Europe-wide procedure for evaluating the impact of transport on air pollutant emissions and energy consumption. It brings together the most comprehensive and up-to-date information on emission rates and activity statistics which, together, make it possible to estimate the emissions resulting from almost any transport operation.
In this project the criterion used for the inclusion of an activity is whether it contributes to the transport of goods or people. The following modes are included: road transport, railways, water transport (inland and marine, but excluding leisure activities and fishing), air traffic.
The results of the project should be exploitable by any transport research laboratory, transport consultant or vehicle specialist. Nevertheless the methodology is often very detailed and therefore sometimes not easy to use for non emission specialists. A first type of exploitation is to transform the methodology into an informatic tool. This work is being performed for the European Environment Agency and should be completed by the end of 1999 by providing the new version of COPERT 3.
Another sought exploitation is to transform the detailed emission factors and traffic characteristics into aggregated emission factors, much more usable by a lot of non-specialists. For that the collaboration of transport economists is sought, in order to use comprehensive and robust traffic characteristics forecasts.