Assessing the monetary benefit of improving air quality

The European Commission and some Member States have recently carried out studies to estimate the monetary benefits of proposals to improve air quality and reduce adverse effects on the environment.

Early studies suggested extremely high monetary benefits arising from relatively small changes to air quality, and this provoked considerable debate between those who wanted to believe such figures and those who felt the estimates were unrealistically high. It continues to be a difficult and sensitive debate but there has been a perceptible shift in opinion towards more modest benefit evaluations.