the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 27 Jan 2025
Residential heating emissions for the Western Balkans
Abstract. Air pollution adversely effects health, ecosystems and infrastructure. In the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo1, Montenegro, Republic of North Macedonia and Serbia), the air pollution situation is more adverse than in the European Union in general. Understanding the air quality situation requires high quality emission data, with high resolution spatial distribution, especially for enabling remediation efforts.
In this work we have calculated air pollution emissions from heating of individual housing units in the Western Balkan region. The basis for the dataset is a geographical dataset of buildings detected from satellite imagery by artifical intelligence (AI) methods. The building data has been combined with geospatial landuse datasets as well as statistical data for heating needs for residential buildings in the countries included, and finally with emission factors to calculate the heating emissions.
The resulting datasets provides high-resolution heating emission data for common pollutants and are published as open data (Asker, 2024) . When comparing national totals for emissions, the datasets in this work are comparable to other, spatially coarser datasets, though the agreement strongly depends on the fuel usage data for each country/region.
1All references to Kosovo in this document shall be understood to be in the context of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 (1999)
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RC1: 'Comment on essd-2024-462', Djordje Djatkov, 04 Mar 2025
The paper prepared by the author Christian Asker with the title Residential heating emissions for the Western Balkans, represents the outmost significance for the environment in the Western Balkan economies. It is well known that ambient air quality in these economies is critical, whereby residential heating plays a dominant contributor for some air pollutants (PM10, PM2.5, NMVOC). SOx and NOx emissions dominantly originate from the Power sector (electricity generation). However, residential sector as a source of emissions represents the challenge regarding the opportunities to reduce emissions and improve air quality. Providing the geographical distribution of emissions, with high
resolution spatial distribution, definitely contributes to the development of depollution strategies.Regarding the selected fuels: 1) it is not clear whether the wood residues also include pruning residues; 2) wood is only firewood?; 3) baled straw + corn cobs is missing totally (represented in rural area with crop production, where households use these crop residues as a solid fuel for heating purposes).
In addition to the residential sector, the sector of agriculture should be also considered, since it also represents the source of air pollutant emissions (e.g. combustion of solid fuels for processing purposes such as drying, etc.). If it is contained in the residential (commonly considered as households + agriculture), it should be emphasized.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-462-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christian Asker, 28 Mar 2025
We thank the reviewer for the positive and constructive comments.
The selected fuels are based on the available fuel usage data for the Western Balkan countries and regions.
For some of these countries, such as Albania, the fuel usage data do not contain wood residue at all. However, it is likely there is at least some wood residue used also in Albania, but we lack information about that.
Similarly, for Bosnia and Herzegovina, e.g. ,there is fuel data for wood residue but no clear definition of what the wood residue contains, such as straw or corn-hobs. For clarity, this is explained in the updated version of the manuscript.We also agree that combustion in agriculture can be an important source of emissions.
Part of our methodology aims to discriminate the 1-3 family houses in all areas, as parts of the residential heating sector. For smaller farms that lie on the outskirts of residential areas, correct detection of housing units with our methodology is difficult, which is mentioned in the manuscript. However, there may also be uncertainties in how much of the statistical fuel usage data is for heating of housing and for heating of buildings related to farming. This makes the distinction between emission sectors difficult in such areas. To improve this issue, better methods for detecting the housing units for smaller farms is needed, as well as more detailed fuel usage data. While this issue constitute an uncertainty in our methodology, we believe that the method presented in the manuscript is a first step towards more detailed emission data for the region and a first step that can serve as a basis for further elaboration and improvements.Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-462-AC1
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christian Asker, 28 Mar 2025
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RC2: 'Comment on essd-2024-462', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 Mar 2025
In general, this manuscript is like a technic report rather than a research paper. Although an emission dataset is provided, the innovation is not shown. The introduction part does not include any literature review, hence not stating the importance and innovation of this manuscript. Neither data or method is clearly stated. I cannot recommend its publication.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-462-RC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Christian Asker, 28 Mar 2025
We thank the reviewer for the comments.
From the scope of the ESSD journal:
"Earth System Science Data (ESSD) is an international, interdisciplinary journal for the publication of articles on original research data (sets), furthering the reuse of high-quality data of benefit to Earth system sciences."
Based on this, we believe that the manuscript and corresponding dataset falls within the scope of the journal.While the innovation lies in the the use of AI-based building detection data combined with other open dataset to obtain a dataset of individual housing units, we agree that the innovation of the methodology can be more clearly described and emphasized.
Similarly, while the importance of the manuscript and dataset is demonstrated, it may be more clearly described and emphasized.
Both these issues has been improved in the new version of the manuscript.Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-462-AC2
-
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Christian Asker, 28 Mar 2025
Status: closed
-
RC1: 'Comment on essd-2024-462', Djordje Djatkov, 04 Mar 2025
The paper prepared by the author Christian Asker with the title Residential heating emissions for the Western Balkans, represents the outmost significance for the environment in the Western Balkan economies. It is well known that ambient air quality in these economies is critical, whereby residential heating plays a dominant contributor for some air pollutants (PM10, PM2.5, NMVOC). SOx and NOx emissions dominantly originate from the Power sector (electricity generation). However, residential sector as a source of emissions represents the challenge regarding the opportunities to reduce emissions and improve air quality. Providing the geographical distribution of emissions, with high
resolution spatial distribution, definitely contributes to the development of depollution strategies.Regarding the selected fuels: 1) it is not clear whether the wood residues also include pruning residues; 2) wood is only firewood?; 3) baled straw + corn cobs is missing totally (represented in rural area with crop production, where households use these crop residues as a solid fuel for heating purposes).
In addition to the residential sector, the sector of agriculture should be also considered, since it also represents the source of air pollutant emissions (e.g. combustion of solid fuels for processing purposes such as drying, etc.). If it is contained in the residential (commonly considered as households + agriculture), it should be emphasized.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-462-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christian Asker, 28 Mar 2025
We thank the reviewer for the positive and constructive comments.
The selected fuels are based on the available fuel usage data for the Western Balkan countries and regions.
For some of these countries, such as Albania, the fuel usage data do not contain wood residue at all. However, it is likely there is at least some wood residue used also in Albania, but we lack information about that.
Similarly, for Bosnia and Herzegovina, e.g. ,there is fuel data for wood residue but no clear definition of what the wood residue contains, such as straw or corn-hobs. For clarity, this is explained in the updated version of the manuscript.We also agree that combustion in agriculture can be an important source of emissions.
Part of our methodology aims to discriminate the 1-3 family houses in all areas, as parts of the residential heating sector. For smaller farms that lie on the outskirts of residential areas, correct detection of housing units with our methodology is difficult, which is mentioned in the manuscript. However, there may also be uncertainties in how much of the statistical fuel usage data is for heating of housing and for heating of buildings related to farming. This makes the distinction between emission sectors difficult in such areas. To improve this issue, better methods for detecting the housing units for smaller farms is needed, as well as more detailed fuel usage data. While this issue constitute an uncertainty in our methodology, we believe that the method presented in the manuscript is a first step towards more detailed emission data for the region and a first step that can serve as a basis for further elaboration and improvements.Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-462-AC1
-
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christian Asker, 28 Mar 2025
-
RC2: 'Comment on essd-2024-462', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 Mar 2025
In general, this manuscript is like a technic report rather than a research paper. Although an emission dataset is provided, the innovation is not shown. The introduction part does not include any literature review, hence not stating the importance and innovation of this manuscript. Neither data or method is clearly stated. I cannot recommend its publication.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-462-RC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Christian Asker, 28 Mar 2025
We thank the reviewer for the comments.
From the scope of the ESSD journal:
"Earth System Science Data (ESSD) is an international, interdisciplinary journal for the publication of articles on original research data (sets), furthering the reuse of high-quality data of benefit to Earth system sciences."
Based on this, we believe that the manuscript and corresponding dataset falls within the scope of the journal.While the innovation lies in the the use of AI-based building detection data combined with other open dataset to obtain a dataset of individual housing units, we agree that the innovation of the methodology can be more clearly described and emphasized.
Similarly, while the importance of the manuscript and dataset is demonstrated, it may be more clearly described and emphasized.
Both these issues has been improved in the new version of the manuscript.Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-462-AC2
-
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Christian Asker, 28 Mar 2025
Data sets
Emissions for individual housing in the Western Balkans Christian Asker https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13906810
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