Fuel quality monitoring in the EU in 2018. Fuel quality monitoring under the Fuel Quality Directive

• Main Authors: George Pattias, Evi Gouliarou, Giorgos Mellios
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Norway; Iceland
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/3898340; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3898340

This annual report of the European Environment Agency (EEA) provides a summary of the information on the quality of fuels in the European Union (EU) in 2018, as reported in 2019 by EU Member States, Iceland and Norway under Directive 98/70/EC relating to the quality of petrol and diesel fuels (the Fuel Quality Directive, FQD) as amended by Directive 2009/30/EC. Each year, under the requirements of FQD Article 8, EU Member States must report information relating to the volume and the quality of petrol and diesel fuels sold for road transport in their territories. More specifically, Member States must sample fuels each year and analyse their technical characteristics to ensure that they are consistent with the requirements of the FQD. The limiting values set out by the FQD concern parameters such as, for petrol fuels, octane number, content of lead, manganese, oxygen and sulphur, etc. and, for diesel fuels, content of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), manganese and sulphur, etc. Member States assess the quality of fuels through a Fuel Quality Monitoring System (FQMS). European Standard EN 14274 provides information on how to set up an FQMS, depending on the country size and statistical model used, as well as guidance on determining the minimum number of samples to be taken. Since 2015, the EEA has supported the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate Action in the compilation, quality checking and dissemination of information reported under the FQD.