Benefits and Trade-Offs Between Energy Conservation and Releases of Unintentionally Produced Persistent Organic Pollutants: A STAP advisory document

The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasized a need for capturing synergies and avoiding trade-offs when addressing greenhouse gases (GHG) mitigation and air pollution control. The efficiency of a framework depends on the choice and design of the policy instruments and their integration. Air pollutants and GHGs are often emitted by the same sources, and, therefore, a single set of technologies or policy measures (an integrated approach) has co-benefits for emission reduction. However, there are situations when energy efficiency improvements may have limited or negative impact on the release of air pollutants (trade-offs).