UCL-Energy seminar: 'A breath of fresh air - Air pollution: causes, impacts and policies'

Air pollution damages people’s health and ecosystems. We first need to understand the sources of air pollutants, how they result in pollution concentrations where people live and work, and how they damage people’s health. Then we can construct policies for improving air quality and strategies and actions for implementing policies.

The talk will include:

• Estimating the impacts of energy strategies on national and city pollution emissions leading to city air pollution concentrations, and the resulting changes in health impacts on city populations
• Air pollution control strategy, including central and local government policy including legislation and legal challenges.
• Different tax options at national and city level in the UK to tackle the ‘public health emergency’ caused by diesel cars which are a major (but not sole) contributor to air pollution in the UK. 

About the speakers:

Mark Barrett is Professor of Energy and Environmental Systems Modelling. He has worked on pollution and energy strategy in Europe and Asia. He is technical director of the Innovate funded project with the Energy Saving Trust developing a city energy and environment model linking city energy strategy to economics, air pollution and health.

Dr Claire Holman is a Senior Research Associate with 30 years’ experience in air quality, advising the European Commission, Governments, local authorities, businesses and NGOs on forecasting air quality and impacts, and emission control measures. She was the expert witness for ClientEarth’s successful challenge to the government’s Air Quality Plan.

Paul Drummond is a Research Associate in Energy and Climate Policy at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources. He researches policies for energy and resources efficiency and environmental improvement. A recent co-authored report is ‘Tackling air pollution from diesel cars through tax: options for the UK’, for Green Budget Europe.

We expect this event to be extremely popular, and places will be on a first come first served basis. We only allow one ticket registration per email address. If multiple tickets are registered to a single attendee you will be contacted and the duplicate tickets will be cancelled. If you are no longer able to attend please email energy-events@ucl.ac.uk

The presentation will promptly start at 5:30pm and will be followed by drinks and nibbles.

Please note this event will be filmed and posted on the UCL-Energy Youtube Channel and the event audio will be posted on the UCL-Energy Soundcloud Channel.

By signing up to this event, attendees give permission to be contacted in future about UCL-Energy. Please email energy-events@ucl.ac.uk if you do not wish to be added to the mailing lists.

Image credit: David Holt Flickr