Blog Elements

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Register Now! | Improving air quality together | Prepair’s International conference | 31st of May | Bruxelles and online

LIFE IP PREPAIR INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “Improving air quality together. LIFE IP PrepAIR: project’s achievements and main results” 31st May 2022, Emilia-Romagna Region Delegation to the EU
Rue Montoyer 21, 1000 Brussels. Partner Event of the EU Green Week 2022. Event celebrating the LIFE 30th Anniversary.

11/05/2022

The relationship between agriculture and air quality. Results of Prepair’s pillar agricolture presented in Bologna

Highlights, News and Events

Agriculture plays a central role in the air quality issue of the Po valley, this has emerged more and more in recent years. The issue has been studied in depth within the LIFE PrepAIR project. After five years of work, with the project entering its final stage, the results of the pillar dedicated to agriculture […]

11/05/2022

Register Now! | Improving air quality together | Prepair’s International conference | 31st of May | Bruxelles and online

News and Events, Next events

11/05/2022

The relationship between agriculture and air quality. Results of Prepair’s pillar agricolture presented in Bologna

Highlights, News and Events

11/05/2022

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Register Now! | Improving air quality together | Prepair’s International conference | 31st of May | Bruxelles and online

News and Events, Next events

Improving air quality together.
LIFE IP PrepAIR: project’s achievements and main results

LIFE IP PREPAIR INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

31st May 2022
Emilia-Romagna Region Delegation to the EU
Live from Rue Montoyer 21, 1000 Brussels and online

Partner Event of the EU Green Week 2022
EU Green Deal – Make it Real

Event celebrating the LIFE 30th Anniversary

The LIFE IP PrepAIR project aims at the improvement of air quality in the Po Valley, Northern Italy, and in Slovenia. It supports the implementation of regional and local air quality plans through a set of actions focused on capacity building, monitoring and evaluation, realization of web-based tools, education and communication. At the sixth year of the project, many outcomes have been realized in the five thematic pillars that are Agriculture, Biomass burning, Energy efficiency, Transports, Monitoring, Emissions and Air quality evaluation.

The international conference wants to present the main project’s achievements and results. It aims to give a contribution to the process towards Zero pollution and the New Green Deal, sharing data, reports and tools elaborated in one of the most complex areas of Europe as far as air pollution is concerned.

Download the agenda

Click here to register to the event to participate in presence or online

11/05/2022

The relationship between agriculture and air quality. Results of Prepair’s pillar agricolture presented in Bologna

Highlights, News and Events

Agriculture plays a central role in the air quality issue of the Po valley, this has emerged more and more in recent years. The issue has been studied in depth within the LIFE PrepAIR project.

After five years of work, with the project entering its final stage, the results of the pillar dedicated to agriculture and the one dedicated to emission evaluation and monitoring were presented during the conference “Agricolture and Air quality”, that took place in Bologna in the presence of the project partners and speakers hosted by Regione Emilia Romagna, Prepair’s project leader. More than 250 participants followed the event remotely.

The results presented shows the great effort that the project partners carried out to deepen and study the mechanisms that regulate the relationship between agriculture and air quality. These mechanisms depend on a large number of variables and factors. Emissions, for example, depend on the chemical composition of the manure and fertilizers used, on the biological cycles of the animals, on the variables related to the composition of the soil and on the meteorological and climatic variables, as well as on the absorption capacity of the plants.

Particular attention has been paid to fine aerosol (PM 2.5) produced by ammonia emitted by livestock waste (in the relaying, storage and spreading phases) if not managed properly.

The “BAT Tool”, a web-based app developed by Prepair’s project to estimate ammonia emissions into the atmosphere, is now available and free to use. It allows to calculate emissions starting from data on techniques applied in intensive pig farming and poultry. The analyzes carried out so far shows that this tool has a considerable potential in developing technological assessments, both at a company and territorial level. To further develop this potential will have to be supported by the harmonized use of data sources, relating to the actual structure of the farms in the different territorial contexts.

The speakers that intervened during the day explored the issues and proposed solutions to reduce ammonia emissions thanks to the use of good practices, derived from the investigations and experiments. Since 2019 BAT Tool has been used almost five thousand business simulations, an impressive given important result; since January 22, Bat Tool Plus is available, an upgraded version of the original tool. One of the future objectives is therefore to expand the application of the BAT-Tool to assess the application of different techniques in the different emission phases, to quantify the achievable emission reduction in each scenario.

The proposal is based on the identification of defined and achievable ammonia emission reduction targets related to the application of each specific good practice. The predetermined reduction target can therefore be chosen by each farm within the available BATs.

As a conclusion, a round table took place with the participation of the Directors of the Environment and Agriculture of the Po Valley Regions. From the discussion emerged the importance to include specific measures in the policies that are under definition at national and European level. However the current situation requires more resources then the ones currently available and an active involvement of the national government.

Furthermore, as a result of the debate it was confirmed that, in some regions, nitric fertilizer are already buried within 12 hours from the spread: thus the envisaged measures are applicable, even if mediation is necessary to overcome the resistance of smaller companies worried by the economic impact of the measures. After all, as the project managers stated, “if we do not anticipate the burial time we have no effect”. And they add: “thirty years ago, water protection plans made it clear that agriculture can affect the quality of the water resource. Today we understand that it can affect the air. But there is a problem of resources: we must understand on a national scale that there is a real emergency, that we are on very important orders of magnitude. And we must act in a not too long time, otherwise we will spend more sanctions than we would with new investments “.

In conclusion all the speakers underlined that the added value of PrepAir is precisely the creation of relations between persons and institutions that was possible because of the joint work and has been an absolute unprecedent in the sector. In other words, the project has led the partners’ Environment and Agriculture offices to talk to each other in an increasingly stable and convinced way: creating a fundamental synergy to better address the problems linked to pollution, and to proceed toward the future jointly.

Dowload the slides of the conference (mostly in Italian)

Watch the picture gallery.

11/05/2022

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Register Now! | Improving air quality together | Prepair’s International conference | 31st of May | Bruxelles and online

The relationship between agriculture and air quality. Results of Prepair’s pillar agricolture presented in Bologna

Register Now! | Improving air quality together | Prepair’s International conference | 31st of May | Bruxelles and online

The relationship between agriculture and air quality. Results of Prepair’s pillar agricolture presented in Bologna

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Register Now! | Improving air quality together | Prepair’s International conference | 31st of May | Bruxelles and online

Improving air quality together.
LIFE IP PrepAIR: project’s achievements and main results

The relationship between agriculture and air quality. Results of Prepair’s pillar agricolture presented in Bologna

Social Media

CONTACTS

LIFEPREPAIR

SUPPORTED BY