Emissions

Quick links: Low Emissions Toolkit EMFAC-HK Conversion Tool

CERC has expertise in investigating air quality emissions from the full range of sources, including the transport, domestic, industrial and commercial sectors. For example, we have taken steps to improve on published diesel car emission factors using real world emissions data. Our consultancy team provide services such as calculation and manipulation of emissions inventories and assessment of Clean Air Zones. Our ADMS-Roads, ADMS-Urban and ADMS-Airport software automatically calculates road traffic emissions using built-in datasets such as the UK Emissions Factors Toolkit. EMIT software is a comprehensive tool for fast and straightforward calculation and analysis of emissions inventories. EMIT incorporates over fifty emissions calculation datasets, including datasets for UK road traffic. Our COPERT to EMIT tool (available from our User Area) allows road traffic emissions from the European Environment Agency’s COPERT software to be imported into EMIT.

CERC have developed custom tools for calculating and manipulating emissions in several research projects.

• The Low Emissions Toolkit enables UK local authorities to assess the costs and benefits of low emission strategies.
• The EMFAC-HK Conversion Tool enables the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department to use emissions calculated from its Emission Factors Model for Hong Kong (EMFAC-HK) in the ADMS-Urban dispersion model.

Low Emissions Toolkit

The Low Emissions Toolkit (LET) was developed in 2010-11 by CERC with TTR (now part of TRL) and RPS for the Low Emission Strategies Partnership. The purpose of the tool is to enable UK local authority planners and fleet managers to assess the costs and benefits of low emission strategies. The tool quantifies changes in emissions of local pollutants and greenhouse gases, and the associated cost and benefits, due to the introduction of low emissions strategies. CERC created the tool as an Excel spreadsheet which performs all the calculations and creates graphical visualisations of the costs and benefits. A review of the LET and overall method by Air Quality Consultants and Aether concluded that it was “a streamlined and efficient approach to estimating emission reductions associated with fleets and planning developments”.

Learn more

• More information is available from the LESP website
• A presentation on the LET (.pdf, <1MB)

EMFAC-HK to ADMS-Urban Conversion Tool

In 2015 CERC developed an emissions conversion software tool for the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department (HK EPD). The EPD carries out emissions calculations with its Emission Factors Model for Hong Kong (EMFAC-HK), which contains detailed road fleet data for the Hong Kong region. CERC developed a tool to convert the output from this model into data ready for use in the ADMS-Urban dispersion model, including the calculation of road-by-road emissions by combining traffic activity data with the emission factors produced by EMFAC-HK. The tool development supported a project by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) for the HK EPD, in which ADMS-Urban was used to model the air quality in Hong Kong, taking into account its unique topographical features and deep street canyons. CERC were contracted by HKUST to develop the conversion tool for the HK EPD.