Evaluation of weighting methods for measuring the EU-27 overall environmental impact

In this project, seven operational weighting sets have been selected and have been applied to the intervention profiles of the EU28, the World and the Netherlands, not on time series. Three sets are available for the weighting applied on midpoint level. Three sets are available for the weighting applied on endpoint level. One set is available for the integrated modelling and weighting, applied on intervention level. All weighting sets applied on midpoint level refer to interactive panel weighting, i.e. EPA, BEES, and NOGEPA. Two weighting sets applied on endpoint level refer to panel weighting, i.e. Ecoindicator99 and LIME. One weighting set, ReCiPe damage, refers to weighting on endpoint level using damage cost based on willingness-to-pay (WtP) valuation, which is itself based on panels but usually not interactive panels. The weighting set in the integrated modelling and weighting refers to different costs. These are damage cost (as WtP) for human health and climate change; market prices for crop damages due to acidification and eutrophication; restoration costs for biodiversity (WtP) and for damages to buildings (market prices). The seven selected and expanded operational weighting methods have been combined into a single meta-weighting set. This combined weighting set can be varied as to the strength of the individual methods in determining the outcome. The application to a time series of European data suggests that there is not a wide divergence between the different weighting methods, at least as developed and applied in this report. This means that the choice of specific weighting methods may not have an overarching influence on outcomes and the combined set of meta-weights may reasonably reflect different positions in weighting. Nevertheless, this may also be linked to some of the adaptations and extrapolations across methods made in this project.