The current three-year research period envisages the evolution of the harmonized assessment model (HAM)—developed in previous years to assess the impact of energy scenarios on air quality—into an integrated assessment model (IAM). This will allow air pollution-related health effects to be considered as early as the cost-effectiveness analyses conducted using the TIMES-RSE energy model to evaluate energy policies at the national and regional levels. Preliminary activities were carried out in the first year of the project that made the HAM model more complete by adding the industrial sector to the already investigable high-emission activities, and verified its reliability through validation simulations.

The emissions module was updated to include emission factors characteristic of different industrial sectors, which are necessary to convert activity levels into quantities of emitted pollutants. With the inclusion of the industrial sector, the model is now able to estimate the impact on atmospheric concentrations and health damage caused by most pollutant emissions, with the exception of ammonia, which is mainly emitted by agriculture. The sensitivity coefficients used by the simplified emission-concentration model SIMBAD—which represent the relationship between changes in emissions and corresponding changes in concentrations—were then also calculated for the industrial sector.

In order to evaluate the accuracy of SIMBAD, processing was carried out comparing the results with those produced by simulations using the CAMx reference model driven by the same emission scenarios. The results show that SIMBAD is able to reproduce very satisfactorily the annual average NO2 and particulate matter concentrations calculated by CAMx. The model was then tested with some scenarios based on estimated service demands for different industries. The spatial distribution of the emission variations is consistently reflected in the calculated concentrations, the variations of which are found to be mainly related to cement plants for NO2 and steel mills for PM2.5.

The estimated health impacts are modest. Overall, the work done in the first year has made the harmonized model more complete and reliable, and the results obtained will be used in the development of the integrated version in subsequent years.