The IZT has already produced several emission forecasts for air pollutants - such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter - on behalf of the Federal Environment Agency. At the same time, the IZT was involved in revising the energy data model used by the Federal Environment Agency "Balance of Emission Causes". In a follow-up commission from the Federal Environment Agency, the IZT converted the previous forecasts for energy consumption and emission factors into the new structure of this model. This enabled the Federal Environment Agency to update the national forecasts up to 2020 for the most important air pollutants.

As part of parallel research projects of the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), in 2006 the IZT developed emission forecasts up to 2020 for sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile hydrocarbons other than methane (NMVOC) and ammonia (NH3) (Project: Measures for the NEC Directive) and on the other hand for total particulate matter and the particulate matter fractions PM10 and PM2.5 (Project: Particulate matter 2020) have been finalised. In their fine structuring into activity rates (e.g. energy consumption) and emission factors (e.g. specific emissions per energy unit of fuel input), these forecasts are disaggregated according to the structure of the UBA Central System Emissions (ZSE) database. For the stationary combustion plants sector, the ZSE structure was fed by the BEU (Balance of Emission Causes) model.

The ZSE/BEU structure as of November 2005 was used for the above-mentioned emission forecasts. In 2006, however, a third project, also involving the IZT (Project: Energy data for climate reporting), the structure of the BEU model was fundamentally revised.

The purpose of this follow-up project was to convert the forecasts for energy consumption and emission factors on which the above-mentioned emission forecasts are based from the old BEU/ZSE structure to the new one, thus enabling the emission forecasts to be updated.